School Board Proposes 77% Pay Increase for Themselves

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t mind the pay increase because the $32,000 they make is way too little for the amount of time they spend. They have lots of meetings and people email and call them and expect immediate constituent responses. I hope the pay increase means some regular people can now try for the job, not just connected politician wannabes.

The law limits when they can give themselves raises and they haven’t had one since 2015. There’s only 12 of them so it makes no sense to compare it to staff raises.

Are you seriously suggesting they actually respond to constituents with whom they disagree? They engage with their political allies. If you challenge them, they ignore you.

[Anonymous]

they get paid very little and this is why no one who is qualified wants the job. they should pay more to attract some talent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t mind the pay increase because the $32,000 they make is way too little for the amount of time they spend. They have lots of meetings and people email and call them and expect immediate constituent responses. I hope the pay increase means some regular people can now try for the job, not just connected politician wannabes.

The law limits when they can give themselves raises and they haven’t had one since 2015. There’s only 12 of them so it makes no sense to compare it to staff raises.

It’s not a coincidence that they waited until after the June 20th deadline to register to run in the fall elections had passed before they dropped this bombshell. So the additional candidates that you seem to think a higher salary might elicit won’t be the ones making these ridiculous salaries. It will more likely be incompetent chumps like Karl Frisch and flakes like Melanie Meren, who have been total failures in office.

These people should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

The salary new business was on 6/15

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The entire School Board approach to education policy needs to be done away with. What are the benefits to having an elected board who only get their position through name recognition and political party fundraising?

We'd be far better off having real professionals with real degrees who are hired competitively into Board-like roles to represent each district. This would also remove bias and conflict of interest as each representative would likely be independent instead of having hidden agendas for their children's pyramids.

I remember when the SB wasn’t an elected position and so many people were thankful that it was changing to an elected one.

That was decades ago and whatever hopes people had that elected members would turn out to be an improvement have long since been dashed. You could not come up with a worse group of people than the current members - and the way in which they are going about increasing their own salaries is just more evidence of this. They stick kids in trailers and want to be paid more than many full-time employees. They are disgusting.

Are there many candidates vying for these positions? Are they better?

They aren't needed. Just do away with them and have the BOS with a school specialist on their team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t mind the pay increase because the $32,000 they make is way too little for the amount of time they spend. They have lots of meetings and people email and call them and expect immediate constituent responses. I hope the pay increase means some regular people can now try for the job, not just connected politician wannabes.

The law limits when they can give themselves raises and they haven’t had one since 2015. There’s only 12 of them so it makes no sense to compare it to staff raises.

Are you seriously suggesting they actually respond to constituents with whom they disagree? They engage with their political allies. If you challenge them, they ignore you.

Some write back to those who disagree. Most don’t. But I am not referring to political or theoretical reasons for writing. I am talking about all the people who write them about something that happened at their kid’s school or sports practice… individual and personal things that seem ridiculous to write a part time board member about but they do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The entire School Board approach to education policy needs to be done away with. What are the benefits to having an elected board who only get their position through name recognition and political party fundraising?

We'd be far better off having real professionals with real degrees who are hired competitively into Board-like roles to represent each district. This would also remove bias and conflict of interest as each representative would likely be independent instead of having hidden agendas for their children's pyramids.

I remember when the SB wasn’t an elected position and so many people were thankful that it was changing to an elected one.

That was decades ago and whatever hopes people had that elected members would turn out to be an improvement have long since been dashed. You could not come up with a worse group of people than the current members - and the way in which they are going about increasing their own salaries is just more evidence of this. They stick kids in trailers and want to be paid more than many full-time employees. They are disgusting.

Are there many candidates vying for these positions? Are they better?

They aren't needed. Just do away with them and have the BOS with a school specialist on their team.

Ooh, I like this idea!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The entire School Board approach to education policy needs to be done away with. What are the benefits to having an elected board who only get their position through name recognition and political party fundraising?

We'd be far better off having real professionals with real degrees who are hired competitively into Board-like roles to represent each district. This would also remove bias and conflict of interest as each representative would likely be independent instead of having hidden agendas for their children's pyramids.

I remember when the SB wasn’t an elected position and so many people were thankful that it was changing to an elected one.

That was decades ago and whatever hopes people had that elected members would turn out to be an improvement have long since been dashed. You could not come up with a worse group of people than the current members - and the way in which they are going about increasing their own salaries is just more evidence of this. They stick kids in trailers and want to be paid more than many full-time employees. They are disgusting.

Are there many candidates vying for these positions? Are they better?

They aren't needed. Just do away with them and have the BOS with a school specialist on their team.

Ooh, I like this idea!

It would be just as good as the morons we get now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The entire School Board approach to education policy needs to be done away with. What are the benefits to having an elected board who only get their position through name recognition and political party fundraising?

We'd be far better off having real professionals with real degrees who are hired competitively into Board-like roles to represent each district. This would also remove bias and conflict of interest as each representative would likely be independent instead of having hidden agendas for their children's pyramids.

I remember when the SB wasn’t an elected position and so many people were thankful that it was changing to an elected one.

That was decades ago and whatever hopes people had that elected members would turn out to be an improvement have long since been dashed. You could not come up with a worse group of people than the current members - and the way in which they are going about increasing their own salaries is just more evidence of this. They stick kids in trailers and want to be paid more than many full-time employees. They are disgusting.

Are there many candidates vying for these positions? Are they better?

They aren't needed. Just do away with them and have the BOS with a school specialist on their team.

Ooh, I like this idea!

It would be just as good as the morons we get now.

No, it would be better because we would lose the showboating and using our schools as a step to higher office.

[Anonymous]

It would also tie housing to schools better. People couldn't hide as easily behind how certain areas have higher growth or more apartments which affect schools.

[Anonymous]

They need to exercise some restraint and vote this down. Giving themselves a 77% raise is just obscene.

[Anonymous]

Many of the FCPS SB members I know work at least as many hours as a full time job. If you don’t pay them a living wage, then the only people who will run are privileged people who can afford to work for a small amount of money - retirees, wealthy people, stay at home moms, etc. or by people who have to work another job to make ends meet and don’t have the time to commit to the SB. I think the community would best be represented by people with skills and experience who view the job as a full time paid position.

[Anonymous]

If this passes, they need to eliminate all of their FT assistants. They shouldn’t need both for a job that is clearly not FT. They don’t need to be visiting random schools in order to make an appearance to document how “engaged” they are on their social media.

Stay in your lane, school board members.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many of the FCPS SB members I know work at least as many hours as a full time job. If you don’t pay them a living wage, then the only people who will run are privileged people who can afford to work for a small amount of money - retirees, wealthy people, stay at home moms, etc. or by people who have to work another job to make ends meet and don’t have the time to commit to the SB. I think the community would best be represented by people with skills and experience who view the job as a full time paid position.

+1 I want SB member to be a well-paid position because, otherwise, the types of people who are currently on the school board are going to be … the only people on the school board. Pay it like a full time job, because it basically is one, and you’ll get candidates who want to take the job seriously as a full time job and aren’t limited by not being independently wealthy. Not just use it as a stepping stone to whatever else.

[Anonymous]

I mean I get it honestly. 32K is nothing in Fairfax County and it's basically a full time job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher, this hits hard for me after my 3% raise this year.

I get that. But they haven't had a raise in like a decade. Ideally they would get a raise every year at the same rate that teachers get the raise.