A Heath Bar Of Gold
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board on Tuesday night unanimously approved a four-year contract for superintendent-in-waiting Heath Morrison, who will rake in a total compensation package of more than $300,000 a year.
In turn, Morrison blew into town for some grip-and-grins at a few schools (Byers Elementary, Robinson Middle and Providence High) and promised to begin rebuilding a fractured public trust with the community after a year of tumult that saw multiple school closings, bell schedule upheavals, and stagnating teacher salaries amidst a controversial push for an administratively-driven performance pay plan for educators.
“What I have to do is to really take ownership over that public engagement,” Morrison waxed. Restoring teacher morale, he said, would also be a top priority.
So naturally, the way to impress a rightfully skeptical public and to improve teacher morale is to grab a big bag of loot for a contract, when local unemployment levels are still hovering around 10 percent and CMS teachers are wading through their third year without any pay increases.
Morrison’s contract includes an annual base salary of $288,000 and he is eligible for up to a 10-percent performance bonus. That’s about $26,000 a month in pay, for anybody keeping score at home.
But wait, there’s more. Morrison will also receive a bounty of delayed compensation as part of a cushy retirement package, equal to about 10 percent of his base salary for each year of his contract; so effectively tack on another $28K a year, even though he’ll have to wait to reap the reward.
But wait, there’s more. In addition to the normal allotment of paid vacation and sick days, Morrison’s contract slips him an additional 10 days of paid leave. The contract also provides for health, dental and vision insurance, along with $1,500 a year for life insurance; a taxpayer-funded car (‘natch); membership dues to various groups and organizations (City Club, anyone?); and the usual array of travel and technology perks.
As part of the bargain the school board struck for taxpayers, CMS will pay “reasonable” expenses to move Morrison and his family from Reno to Charlotte, plus foot the bill for up to 90 days of temporary housing. A draft copy of the full contract is here; CMS’ highlighted talking points on the same are here. Morrison starts his new job on July 1.
All in all, a truly sweet and lucrative deal for somebody with three years experience under his belt as a superintendent leading the 64,000-student Washoe School District in Reno, Nevada, where Morrison pulled down about $238,000 a year.
Bonus Round: here’s video of Morrison chumming it up with school board chair Ericka Ellis-Stewart and vice chair Mary McCray this week at the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum, which was “founded around 1980 as an all-black offshoot of Charlotte’s Black Political Caucus” and describes itself as a source of “information of importance to the African American community in particular and the rest of Charlotte in general.” Diversity, you know:
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