9486 in the collection
Houston Superintendent's bonus equals a quarter of his base pay
By Ericka Mellon
Houston schools Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra pocketed nearly all of his performance bonus this year, earning $75,000 of a potential $80,000.
The bonus, based mostly on student test scores, comes on top of Saavedra's annual $302,000 salary. Add in other perks, such as his car allowance, and Saavedra's total deal lands in the $450,000 neighborhood.
School board president Harvin Moore said Saavedra, who became chief of the state's largest school district in 2004, deserved the extra money.
"This was a year in which lots of schools went up in their ratings, and we think we did a pretty good job," Moore said.
The average bonus for a teacher this year was about $2,100, based on preliminary numbers. That represents about 4 percent of the average teacher salary.
Saavedra's bonus equals about 25 percent of his base pay.
The Houston Independent School District plans to release the bonuses of individual teachers, principals and other employees later today in response to the Houston Chronicle's public-information request.
Moore dismissed questions about whether Saavedra's bonus criteria, which is spelled out in his contract, was too easy. Saavedra earned nearly 94 percent of the potential money this year. Last year he received $67,250, or about 84 percent of the maximum.
"Getting the entire bonus would not mean you eliminated the entire achievement gap, and every school was exemplary. That was not required," Moore said. "It was to be on a course that moves us toward that direction. I don't think it was easy for him. I think he and everyone worked very hard this year."
The largest chunk of Saavedra's bonus was based on how teachers fared under their bonus system, which rewards those whose students perform better than expected on standardized tests. Saavedra also earned extra bucks for campuses that received or maintained the state's top academic ratings and lost money for those rated "academically unacceptable."
Despite some academic gains, Saavedra had a tough school year, with voters only narrowly approving an $805 million bond package in November. Several leaders in the black community blasted the superintendent for not seeking public input in developing the proposal. The bonus criteria only includes academic measures, however, not other factors such as communication skills or financial efficiency.
As chief of one of the largest districts in the country, Saavedra oversees a $1.5 billion budget, about 30,000 employees and 200,000 students.
The superintendent in the much-larger Los Angeles school district, which has more than 694,000 students, earns a smaller base salary of $300,000 and no performance bonus, but he gets other perks such as a housing allowance.
HISD's chief academic officer, Karen Garza, whose base salary is $193,780, earned a bonus of $28,140. Her bonus is directly tied to Saavedra's. Because Saavedra earned 93.8 percent of his maximum amount, she got the same percent of her maximum, which is $30,000 under her contract.
"I'm very pleased with the progress the district has made over the last three years, and I haven't singlehandedly done that," Garza said. "There's a lot of good work happening in this district, and I think the gains we've seen in student achievement are just beginning."
— Ericka Mellon
Houston Chronicle
2008-04-08
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