https://www.change.org/p/fighting-for-dr-lewis

Aledo High School teacher was pressured by admin to resign his position. Dr Lewis is one of the best, if not the best teachers in the district and cares tremendously about his students. This would be a huge loss for the district.

If he is on a probationary contract and not a term contract they can basically do whatever they want. As said above, there is likely more to this decision than AP scores. It is very difficult to find teachers right now, probably the most difficult in my 19 years of education. If he is competent, he will find a new job fairly easily.

We know a few people that are former/current Aledo teachers. They're expecting a lot of teachers to leave/be forced out, especially those on probationary contracts. The claim on this particular one is that it was related to test scores but budget issues are more likely the issue.

Pretty sure the state was expected to provide education funding that was lost from the changes to property tax code (or that's my read on it), but the state isn't. Should be an interesting year. We are in a small 3A district in the same county - my wife says the budget deficit is over $1M.

Edit to note - I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle here. Schools assuming their budget gets to increase at X% until forever is also an issue.

So does this imply that we are going to see public school district layoffs in mass quantities, all over the state? We are already seeing that in a number of places, including Fort Worth.

He's not the only one. Many are. I know a teacher who has taught in Aledo for a long time. Her & many senior teachers are resigning after this year because of Dr. Bohn. She told me all teachers who are in their probationary period are being forced to quit for bs reasons. BS reasons because they were all told no one would be let go because of budget costs. However they are all being let go because of budget. See the petition for the one HS teacher that was forced out.

Bohn is a complete B. My teacher person said any bad story you have heard, they are all worse. Which I already knew because my husband has had dealings with her. My husband's construction company, who is local, will never bid another Aledo ISD job because of the bs they went through. They got the job because he was invested. He was born & raised in Aledo & we live here. They screwed them so much it was ridiculous.

It is sad to see some of the board members stance because I know them on a different level. My teacher person told me to keep my kids in private school because Aledo is being ruined by Bohn & the other upper admin. Which is kinda good for me, Maybe people will stop moving here.

I posted about this subject.on the Aledo daily buzz a few.weeks ago & everyone said I bs-ing...my kids go to private so I have no fight in this.....funny that now things are proving to be true. But good for the kids for taking a stand.

He's better off leaving and shouldn't have any issue finding a similar position in a surrounding school district. While there may be advantages to staying in the same school district, IF it is true that he's getting hosed -- either by the district or by his principal -- he needs to take off and not look back.

I agree; there's probably more to the story. But either way, him leaving solves everyone's issue, including his. The students may be upset -- and they may be right. But their gripe should be with the admin. Doing these change.org things will get them nowhere. They need to have a parent run against a board member and fire the admins to get their attention.

Fenrir said:

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It's not a big deal in terms of most districts' overall budgets, but it's got to be maddening for teachers who are at risk of losing their jobs due to budget issues watching superintendents get such massive salaries and raises each year. We've got one district in Texas now with like 2k students whose super makes almost $600k.

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Where?

Stive said:

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Fenrir said:

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It's not a big deal in terms of most districts' overall budgets, but it's got to be maddening for teachers who are at risk of losing their jobs due to budget issues watching superintendents get such massive salaries and raises each year. We've got one district in Texas now with like 2k students whose super makes almost $600k.

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Where?

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This, As of 2023-24 school year the highest paid superintendent in Texas makes $536k.

https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/cgi/sas/broker

Stive said:

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Fenrir said:

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It's not a big deal in terms of most districts' overall budgets, but it's got to be maddening for teachers who are at risk of losing their jobs due to budget issues watching superintendents get such massive salaries and raises each year. We've got one district in Texas now with like 2k students whose super makes almost $600k.

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Where?

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I found it in 2020 for school year 19-20 when I was doing some research. I went back and double checked because I couldn't remember the name of the ISD and noticed that they now have a note saying that the information the ISD provided was misreported that either wasn't there 4 years ago or I missed it. Port Isabell ISD was the district.

Pulling a new report shows 7 ISDs paying their supers >400k per year and 82 paying their supers >300k. I think this is absurd. My local super has averaged 10% raise per year since they got to the district.

Just out of curiosity:

What should someone make that runs an organization with thousands of employees, (some of them with 10,000+) and 10's of thousands of students (several with 1000,000 plus) that they're responsible for?

Who said you shouldn't be able to scrutinize it?

I'm just curious what the person at the top of an org chart like that, with the responsibilities involved, and the management level required, should warrant?

Stive said:

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Who said you shouldn't be able to scrutinize it?

I'm just curious what the person at the top of an org chart like that, with the responsibilities involved, and the management level required, should warrant?

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When a question is asked and worded in the fashion that it was, I don't trust the intent behind it. I think that the higher end of super pay is out of whack with the typical especially given the relative lack of strong correlation between district size and/or success. I don't feel the need to dive into what range I personally think may be within the realm of justified.

Fenrir said:

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Stive said:

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Who said you shouldn't be able to scrutinize it?

I'm just curious what the person at the top of an org chart like that, with the responsibilities involved, and the management level required, should warrant?

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When a question is asked and worded in the fashion that it was, I don't trust the intent behind it. I think that the higher end of super pay is out of whack with the typical especially given the relative lack of strong correlation between district size and/or success. I don't feel the need to dive into what range I personally think may be within the realm of justified.

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Typical what? Nothing about those districts is typical. Not the size, not the budget, not the demographics….they're atypical. And thus the pay is atypical. You're right there's not a correlation between the size and success, so you'd need to clarify why you think the superintendent is overpaid. Just because it's "more than the typical" when everything about the district is "more than the typical" doesn't add any meat to the discussion.

You don't need to dive into what range someone in that world should make, it was simply a follow up question on my part to a comment you had made. Typically discussions are back and forth but when you haven't thought about the solution or don't have any benchmarks for what someone in that type of roll should make annually all you have to say is "I have no idea what they should get paid. I'm just here to gripe about what they are getting paid."

Fenrir said:

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Stive said:

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Fenrir said:

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It's not a big deal in terms of most districts' overall budgets, but it's got to be maddening for teachers who are at risk of losing their jobs due to budget issues watching superintendents get such massive salaries and raises each year. We've got one district in Texas now with like 2k students whose super makes almost $600k.

---

Where?

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I found it in 2020 for school year 19-20 when I was doing some research. I went back and double checked because I couldn't remember the name of the ISD and noticed that they now have a note saying that the information the ISD provided was misreported that either wasn't there 4 years ago or I missed it. Port Isabell ISD was the district.

Pulling a new report shows 7 ISDs paying their supers >400k per year and 82 paying their supers >300k. I think this is absurd. My local super has averaged 10% raise per year since they got to the district.

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If anything, many Superintendents are underpaid when compared to private sector CEOs that have similar budgets/employees.

Stive said:

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Fenrir said:

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Stive said:

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Who said you shouldn't be able to scrutinize it?

I'm just curious what the person at the top of an org chart like that, with the responsibilities involved, and the management level required, should warrant?

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When a question is asked and worded in the fashion that it was, I don't trust the intent behind it. I think that the higher end of super pay is out of whack with the typical especially given the relative lack of strong correlation between district size and/or success. I don't feel the need to dive into what range I personally think may be within the realm of justified.

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Typical what? Nothing about those districts is typical. Not the size, not the budget, not the demographics….they're atypical. And thus the pay is atypical. You're right there's not a correlation between the size and success, so you'd need to clarify why you think the superintendent is overpaid. Just because it's "more than the typical" when everything about the district is "more than the typical" doesn't add any meat to the discussion.

You don't need to dive into what range someone in that world should make, it was simply a follow up question on my part to a comment you had made. Typically discussions are back and forth but when you haven't thought about the solution or don't have any benchmarks for what someone in that type of roll should make annually all you have to say is "I have no idea what they should get paid. I'm just here to gripe about what they are getting paid."

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I never said there isn't a correlation between size and success. I said there isn't a strong correlation between super compensation and district size, and there definitely is not one between super compensation and success. In other words your argument that size means they should get paid more hasn't really bore itself out in a meaningful way and the one measure that would actually make some measure of sense to base super pay in is most definitely not being factored in any meaningful way.

My assumption is you weren't interested in an actual discussion and you haven't dissuaded me in anyway from that though by misrepresenting what I said.

powerbelly said:

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Fenrir said:

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Stive said:

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Fenrir said:

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It's not a big deal in terms of most districts' overall budgets, but it's got to be maddening for teachers who are at risk of losing their jobs due to budget issues watching superintendents get such massive salaries and raises each year. We've got one district in Texas now with like 2k students whose super makes almost $600k.

---

Where?

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I found it in 2020 for school year 19-20 when I was doing some research. I went back and double checked because I couldn't remember the name of the ISD and noticed that they now have a note saying that the information the ISD provided was misreported that either wasn't there 4 years ago or I missed it. Port Isabell ISD was the district.

Pulling a new report shows 7 ISDs paying their supers >400k per year and 82 paying their supers >300k. I think this is absurd. My local super has averaged 10% raise per year since they got to the district.

---

If anything, many Superintendents are underpaid when compared to private sector CEOs that have similar budgets/employees.

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I'm not aware of anything that does a solid comparison of CEO pay by company size, however, given that the median CEO pay (around $200k per BLS) is only slightly more than the median ISD super pay (~$175k) I'm not sold that this is necessarily the case as the larger companies are going to be vastly larger than the largest ISDs and are also going to skew the median of the pay scale considerably to one end as well.

Fenrir said:

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powerbelly said:

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Fenrir said:

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Stive said:

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Fenrir said:

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It's not a big deal in terms of most districts' overall budgets, but it's got to be maddening for teachers who are at risk of losing their jobs due to budget issues watching superintendents get such massive salaries and raises each year. We've got one district in Texas now with like 2k students whose super makes almost $600k.

---

Where?

---

I found it in 2020 for school year 19-20 when I was doing some research. I went back and double checked because I couldn't remember the name of the ISD and noticed that they now have a note saying that the information the ISD provided was misreported that either wasn't there 4 years ago or I missed it. Port Isabell ISD was the district.

Pulling a new report shows 7 ISDs paying their supers >400k per year and 82 paying their supers >300k. I think this is absurd. My local super has averaged 10% raise per year since they got to the district.

---

If anything, many Superintendents are underpaid when compared to private sector CEOs that have similar budgets/employees.

---

I'm not aware of anything that does a solid comparison of CEO pay by company size, however, given that the median CEO pay (around $200k per BLS) is only slightly more than the median ISD super pay (~$175k) I'm not sold that this is necessarily the case as the larger companies are going to be vastly larger than the largest ISDs and are also going to skew the median of the pay scale considerably to one end as well.

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Looking at DISD with 22k employees and similarly sized public companies the Superintendent makes about 5-6x less than the first few CEOs I looked at.

You want competent and qualified individuals running these districts and the salaries really aren't that crazy. And it isn't the super's salary that is blowing the budget.

Your skepticism of typed words is fun. I was absolutely interested in a conversation about it. What should the Superintendent of DISD, Cypress ISD, Austin ISD, Plano ISD, etc get paid?

And the size of districts absolutely correlates. Not exactly but the tiny districts get paid small (most are less than 100K) and the giant districts are on the upper end of the pay scale and/or the growth scale. Sure there are outliers but most of them have decent-to-great reasons for those outlying numbers. There are also other factors to the equation on their pay: experience, specialties, certain district dynamics, location, and cost of living among others.

Had time to think through what someone that manages Fort Bend ISD should get paid yet? Or a New Caney or Prosper, or Frisco that add about 800 students per year to their rolls and have to figure out the growth model to handle that at all levels of the district? How much should the guy in Cleveland make thats trying to handle the Colony Ridge development and all that has to offer?

I'm genuinely curious to hear what people think those people should earn in their position?

powerbelly said:

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Fenrir said:

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powerbelly said:

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Fenrir said:

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Stive said:

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Fenrir said:

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It's not a big deal in terms of most districts' overall budgets, but it's got to be maddening for teachers who are at risk of losing their jobs due to budget issues watching superintendents get such massive salaries and raises each year. We've got one district in Texas now with like 2k students whose super makes almost $600k.

---

Where?

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I found it in 2020 for school year 19-20 when I was doing some research. I went back and double checked because I couldn't remember the name of the ISD and noticed that they now have a note saying that the information the ISD provided was misreported that either wasn't there 4 years ago or I missed it. Port Isabell ISD was the district.

Pulling a new report shows 7 ISDs paying their supers >400k per year and 82 paying their supers >300k. I think this is absurd. My local super has averaged 10% raise per year since they got to the district.

---

If anything, many Superintendents are underpaid when compared to private sector CEOs that have similar budgets/employees.

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I'm not aware of anything that does a solid comparison of CEO pay by company size, however, given that the median CEO pay (around $200k per BLS) is only slightly more than the median ISD super pay (~$175k) I'm not sold that this is necessarily the case as the larger companies are going to be vastly larger than the largest ISDs and are also going to skew the median of the pay scale considerably to one end as well.

---

Looking at DISD with 22k employees and similarly sized public companies the Superintendent makes about 5-6x less than the first few CEOs I looked at.

You want competent and qualified individuals running these districts and the salaries really aren't that crazy. And it isn't the super's salary that is blowing the budget.

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I said as much in my first post on the subject.

I'd also be curious about a deeper comparison of similar sized companies. Nvidia has a similar number of employees but about 30x the revenue as DISD has for their budget. In fact I'd wage that there will be a significant discrepancy in company revenue vs ISD budgets across the board on comparisons like that. Acting like ISDs, an entity that is essentially just an extension of the government, are truly comparable to company CEOs is an interesting but flawed concept IMO. Should Biden be the highest paid executive in the country? Federal employees are somewhere around 3,000,000 now. An executive of that level must certainly receive the highest salary possible.

The issue becomes attracting the level of talent required to be an effective superintendent. The headaches are hardly worth the salary they get today IMO.

I don't disagree with that entirely. I just don't think that the best solution is ever increasing superintendent salaries though. In the mid 1900s districts were consolidated for a variety of reasons but a big one was that we had like 120,000 districts across the country and many were very small and very remote. Combining some of those allowed for some increases in efficiency and there are studies that show consolidation at that lower level into more average sized districts did help.

However what we have now is a growing list of districts that are so massive and unwieldy that running them is a beating and therefore we have to pay more to keep someone in the position, meanwhile the academic success at these districts rarely improves (and typically falls far below the average district). Is the solution to pay more for someone to run it because it's such a pain or break it up into more manageable sized districts?

powerbelly said:

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Fenrir said:

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powerbelly said:

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Fenrir said:

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Stive said:

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Fenrir said:

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It's not a big deal in terms of most districts' overall budgets, but it's got to be maddening for teachers who are at risk of losing their jobs due to budget issues watching superintendents get such massive salaries and raises each year. We've got one district in Texas now with like 2k students whose super makes almost $600k.

---

Where?

---

I found it in 2020 for school year 19-20 when I was doing some research. I went back and double checked because I couldn't remember the name of the ISD and noticed that they now have a note saying that the information the ISD provided was misreported that either wasn't there 4 years ago or I missed it. Port Isabell ISD was the district.

Pulling a new report shows 7 ISDs paying their supers >400k per year and 82 paying their supers >300k. I think this is absurd. My local super has averaged 10% raise per year since they got to the district.

---

If anything, many Superintendents are underpaid when compared to private sector CEOs that have similar budgets/employees.

---

I'm not aware of anything that does a solid comparison of CEO pay by company size, however, given that the median CEO pay (around $200k per BLS) is only slightly more than the median ISD super pay (~$175k) I'm not sold that this is necessarily the case as the larger companies are going to be vastly larger than the largest ISDs and are also going to skew the median of the pay scale considerably to one end as well.

---

Looking at DISD with 22k employees and similarly sized public companies the Superintendent makes about 5-6x less than the first few CEOs I looked at.

You want competent and qualified individuals running these districts and the salaries really aren't that crazy. And it isn't the super's salary that is blowing the budget.

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I agree you want competent people in charge, but I also don't put a ton of stake it into the actual actions of the super. There are far more important positions beneath the super that have a much greater effect on the direction of a school board. To a certain extent a super is there to be more of a figurehead than actually make important decisions affecting outcomes.

What admin role has more effect on a school board than the Superintendent? By Texas education code (and practice), the only employee the Board hires, fires and manages is the Superintendent. The Superintendent sets the culture of the district, directly through staff. You can watch a district change from night to day or vice versa on the hiring of a Superintendent. Much like some (some) companies cultures are sensitive to their CEO. I have never seen any other role in the district have any more influence on a board than the Superintendent. Heck, the board does the Super's goals and performance review. Agrees to their contract.

Abbott and the legislature is holding this money hostage until they get vouchers for private schools.

oldag941 said:

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What admin role has more effect on a school board than the Superintendent? By Texas education code (and practice), the only employee the Board hires, fires and manages is the Superintendent. The Superintendent sets the culture of the district, directly through staff. You can watch a district change from night to day or vice versa on the hiring of a Superintendent. Much like some (some) companies cultures are sensitive to their CEO. I have never seen any other role in the district have any more influence on a board than the Superintendent. Heck, the board does the Super's goals and performance review. Agrees to their contract.

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I'm not following. Everything you pointed out shows that the school board has influence over the Super Intendent. The fact that the board hires/fires and manages the Superintendent, sets the Superintendent's goals, does performance reviews, and negotiates the Super's contract all show that the Board may be able to influence a Super's actions. It does not show that the Super has influence over the School Board. In fact, those items bring up somewhat of a conflict of interest for the Super to push back on the Board.

I'm not saying that a good Super can't have a large influence on an ISD, but those items don't seem to support the conclusion that the Super has broad influence over the school board.

I was referring to someone else's comment

"There are far more important positions beneath the super that have a much greater effect on the direction of a school board. To a certain extent a super is there to be more of a figurehead than actually make important decisions affecting outcomes."

My experience is that conversely there are no other roles in a district that have as much impact on a school board than the Superintendent. By design. If for no other reason than standard communication protocol and level of engagement between board and Super.

A lot depends on the individual members of the board and the overall dynamics / operations of the board, but if any employee of the district has any influence on the board, it won't be more than the super.

I would say positions like Chief Academic Officer, Directors of Curriculum, Directors for Learning and Instruction, as well as the board of trustees have a much greater impact on things that occur inside of the classroom than the superintendent.


I mean superintendents don't select the board of trustees and don't get a vote when it comes to board matters