Boy, am I naïve. I thought reporting here exactly what I and my fellow taxpayers pay to school board members, a citizen-elected superintendent, and some key higher-ups in the main district office would be easy. Wrong. A deep troll through the posted budget for our local school district reveals none of this information.
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I did find out – on the sly – that DeSoto County School District pays its school board members $25,822 each year. The school budget also includes enough money to pay into the members’ Social Security fund, provide for their participation in a group medical and health plan, and contributes to a retirement account for them. We don’t yet have the grand total, but we’ll keep trying.
Meanwhile, Florida legislators have recommended that school board members be compensated on a sliding scale: the bigger the district, the more the base pay. In its wisdom, legislators deem that counties with a population under 50,000 (DeSoto is home to 33,991 souls at last estimate) should compensate school board folks at the rate of $5,833 a year.
Here's the chart from F.S. Chapter 1001.30
So, even without exercising our privilege to have government in the sunshine, we know the school district pays about $20,000 more to each school board member (times five members equals =$100,000 a year) than the state’s recommendation. And that’s before retirements, health plans, and whatever else we pay for by way of carfare and expenses.
I thought school board service was a civic privilege and duty, to be undertaken by people unmotivated by a substantial paycheck, retirement funds and health plans. Boy, am I naïve.
So, even without the cost of fringe benefits -- and, jeez, who gets those anymore? -- if we paid SBM's what the state recommends, we could put two or three teachers additional into classrooms -- like the high school, where reading/language arts teachers seem to be desperately needed.
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