Superintendent takes salary freeze

By Anna Mitchell  

MARCH 24, 2010 10:23 a.m. (1)

Dr. Penny Fisher, the top employee of South Carolina’s largest school district, has had her contract extended to 2013 but has agreed to freeze her salary in the wake of continued state funding cuts.

The Greenville County School board met with its superintendent in a closed session Tuesday morning to discuss her performance over the past year. The result was a positive evaluation for Fisher and an extension of her existing three-year contract by another year.

She is still working at her 2008 salary of $218,166.

Superintendent

Penny Fisher

“It’s getting to be a really tough situation,” Oby Lyles, the district’s director of communications, said of the district’s budget situation.

Lyles said Fisher’s salary is in line with those of other superintendents at large districts in the Southeast. She oversees a district of close to 70,000 children, more than 9,000 employees and a budget of $444 million.

By comparison, the roughly 24,000-student Richland School District 2 yesterday hired a new superintendent, Katie Brochu, for $215,000.

Greenville County Schools have sustained $47 million in cuts from the state over the past two years, he said, and anticipates an additional $30 million in cuts this coming year. The only thing left to cut at a certain point, Lyles said, is people.

Many positions at schools around the district have already gone unfilled, and class sizes were increased by half a student per teacher this year. Some schools have lost arts and physical education positions; others are paying for support-staff positions through profits from their own after-school programs.

“The school district budget is 90 percent people,” Lyles said. “When you are looking at significant cuts, you are looking at people. You can say ‘programs,’ but it’s really people.”

Among cost-saving options the district’s administration is considering next school year is teacher furloughs of up to five days and administrator furloughs of up to 10 days. This option could potentially save the district millions of dollars, though Lyles said a specific figure was not available yet.

Administrator furloughs would also mean Fisher’s salary would be lower than her 2008 pay rate.

Still, the school board is keeping the furlough option in the bank, so to speak, because the state – as it has the past two years – could announce more cuts in the middle of the year, Lyles said. The district needs a high-dollar, cost-saving option like furloughs available to use on short notice, Lyles said.

“You can’t go out midyear, or at least you don’t want to, and start cutting positions,” Lyles said. “It would have a tremendously negative impact on student learning. So where possible we want to hold furlough days back if we can.”

Fisher was promoted to superintendent in May 2004 with the resignation of William Harner. She had been serving previously as deputy superintendent and chief of staff and originally joined Greenville County Schools in 1996 as assistant superintendent of middle-school education.

Fisher is a 1969 graduate of St. Paul’s College in Virginia and has advanced degrees in education from Rutgers University.

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Anonymous   |2010-03-27 04:50:05 she doesn't deserve that Reply

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