6/14/2011 7:18:00 AMCleveland school administrators get raises but lose costlier perks

June 14, 2011, 7:18 AM  

By Patrick O'Donnell, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland school district is wiping out a few perks that top administrators receive, but adjusting pay so that the employees don't take a large financial hit in the process.

Outgoing interim schools CEO Peter Raskind said earlier this spring that he would eliminate car allowances for administrators and end the practice of the district picking up the employees' share of retirement plan payments.

The controversial pension "pickup" inflates compensation by 10 percent or more and is being eliminated by the state.

Raskind said he wants to cut those perks so that pay for those 25 administrators is simpler and more transparent. But he worried that ending the perks on top of a 4.6 percent pay cut that his predecessor Eugene Sanders imposed last year would be too big of a blow.

Instead, Raskind is capping the total cut at 5 percent by including raises to offset some of the lost perks. He said the district will save about $100,000 through all the moves.

"All of this is not going to add up to a huge sum of money because it's not a lot of employees," he said. "We're doing it because it's the right thing to do. It simplifies things going forward and it increases the transparency."

The district is also scrapping Sanders' decision to make the administrators take 12 unpaid days off during the year to save money. In addition, the district is increasing the amount those 25 administrators -- all at-will, non-union employees -- contribute to health care costs from 7 percent to 10 percent.

Raskind said he considered changing district rules that allow employees to save vacation and sick days until retirement and them receive cash for them, but decided against it. He said that because other district employees are allowed to do this under union contracts, he did not want to treat administrators differently.