Nick Jimenez

What's a good superintendent worth?

Jesus Chavez, the all-but-named next superintendent of the Corpus Christi Independent School District, says his priority is kids and education. That's a straightforward summation of his job, the chief executive in charge of education in the city's largest school district. But it's not that simple. If it were, Abe Saavedra would still be around.
   Chavez takes over a district whose morale and spirit have taken a brutal pummeling. And he will answer to a board still showing signs of a debilitating division and little sign that board members have learned what damage their acrimony has done to public education in Corpus Christi.
   It's easy to be won over by Chavez. He is modest and says the right things about the pre-eminence of education, the importance of the individual student, and says the only measure of success is the highest standard. For our sake, he has to be a success. We can't afford another debacle so soon on the heels of the one that led to Saavedra's departure. Chavez's first job may be in fact to make us forget that he is here because Saavedra is gone. In some ways, the remnants of that controversy are still touching Chavez. Certainly that's true on the issue of salary.
   Two years ago the board split 4-3 on raising Saavedra's salary after it appeared that the superintendent might leave for a better offer. The best advice never given was this: either take the job or shut up. The split over his $170,000 salary became the skids of his downfall.
   Now the first public issue for Chavez is his salary. His requirement of $212,000 lost him the vote of trustees Harry Williams and Pinky Brauer, the board president. And it made salary, rather than dropouts, academic standards, higher SAT scores and other academic subjects, the first introduction of Chavez to the parents, teachers, taxpayers and residents of Corpus Christi.
   Chavez will have to overcome that point, but the issue of salary is a distraction. Few of us are experts on education. For most of us, our only reference point to education is our own schooling. So it's simpler for us to assess a public educator's salary (usually against our own) and render a judgment. Against that standard, to many citizens, accustomed to accepting educators' commitment as a gift, think that giving an educator a big salary is akin to giving a priest a bonus for performance. The trouble, I think, is that we have yet to accept the change in the role of education in our society.
   Superintendents, especially in Texas, get paid big because a lot rides on them. I would argue that a good superintendent is as crucial to a community as a city manager, or a county judge, or the director of economic development.
   And for Corpus Christi, where a third of the workforce has no high school diploma and where per capita earnings are depressing, a superintendent who can raise the educational attainment of the citizenry and create the bedrock for a college-educated and technologically adept workforce - well, what is the salary worth then?
   Chavez makes the point that in the business world CEOs are generously compensated because their value to the profitability of the company is clear. I won't debate the assertion on CEOs, and it's likely that many teachers would argue that they have a clearer impact on students than a superintendent does. But his point that he will be judged as critically against measurable standards as any CEO (and be summarily dismissed as quickly as any CEO after a bad quarter) is well taken.
   Some see a superintendent's salary as an affront to teachers. Maybe that says more about teachers' salaries. Perhaps the fault is not that superintendents are paid so much, but that we still think educators deserve so little.
  
  

 
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