S.D. Schools Chief Wins Praise, 54.5% Salary Hike

City schools Supt. Tom Payzant received an “outstanding” mark on his 1989-90 evaluation Tuesday and was rewarded by school trustees with a contract extension and a four-year 54.5% salary increase to $170,000 in 1993.

Payzant’s contract was extended from Oct. 31, 1992, until June 30, 1994, and his present salary of $110,000 will be boosted by $15,000 annually beginning July 1, until it reaches $170,000 on July 1, 1993.

The board also enhanced Payzant’s car allowance of $9,600 a year with a 5% annual increase and his $7,000 annual expense account with a $500 yearly boost. His current life and disability insurance policies continue without change.

In announcing the generous enhancements, school board President Kay Davis said that the action of trustees stemmed from Payzant’s consideration in March by Miami-Dade County, Fla., for that district’s top post.

The possibility of Payzant’s departure upset the board at a time when San Diego--the nation’s eighth-largest urban district--has a host of innovative educational reforms in the experimental stage. Payzant, 50, has been San Diego superintendent since November, 1982.

“We realized how important it is to keep him in San Diego,” Davis said, citing the challenge of making the district’s ongoing restructuring program work.

That effort is intended to give teachers and principals more responsibility to decide on curriculum and on ways of improving student performance. The board credits Payzant with laying the foundation for the program when he negotiated a four-year labor contract with teachers in the fall of 1988 that includes joint efforts for speeding reforms.

“An urban superintendency is one of the most challenging jobs in America,” Davis, an eight-year veteran trustee, said in speaking for the five-member board. “And despite changes we have had on the board, we have always been candid in (discussing) with Tom the struggles that we face and the ways we want to tackle problems . . . someone like Tom is what we want in San Diego.”

Davis, conscious of the size of the salary boost in light of an anticipated tight budget for fiscal year 1990-91 and possible program cuts, released information showing that Payzant now is only the third-highest paid superintendent in the county despite the district’s 120,000 students. The superintendent of the 27,000-student Sweetwater high school district in South Bay makes $116,000 and the head of Poway’s Unified School District, with 23,000 students, makes $111,000.

Nationally, Payzant is the 10th highest paid superintendent among the nation’s largest 15 school districts, data from the board shows. Under his former contract, Payzant’s salary would have risen to a maximum $129,000 in November, 1991.

A Times survey in 1988 showed that Payzant was the fourth highest paid public official in the county.

While educators in San Diego have said that Payzant is underpaid, the timing of the raise may cause public relations problems. Gov. George Deukmejian has proposed that automatic cost-of-living salary adjustments (COLAs) in the state budget for 1990-91 be smaller than allowed for under inflation. Salary increases for San Diego teachers are tied to the final state budget COLA.

The move to boost Payzant’s salary came after the board determined that an earlier plan, triggered by the Miami recruitment, to set up a tax-deferred retirement plan for him could not be done. Because Payzant had moved from job to job frequently during his career before coming to San Diego in 1982, he does not have strong existing pension benefits and the board intended to give him a lump sum of several hundred thousand dollars to invest for use after retirement, when he would then pay taxes on it.

But Davis told The Times that 1986 changes in federal tax laws meant that the board could not give a public employee a new tax-shelter annuity plan. “So we decided to give (Payzant) a raise and bring up his allowances,” she said.

In calling his overall performance “outstanding,” the board praised Payzant for increasing parent involvement with schools, for drawing up a proposal to improve black and Latino student achievement, and for success in gaining federal and private foundation grants for the district through his many contacts resulting from memberships on numerous national educational policy boards.

But trustees called on Payzant to work on improvements in several areas. Among them:

* Improve collaboration further with teachers and other employee groups to avoid acrimony otherwise possible during 1992 contract negotiations.

* Draw up a plan for gradual funding increases for the district’s maintenance program, which has come under harsh criticism this year for letting a majority of the district’s 170 school sites deteriorate.

* Target dropout prevention at the eighth grade next year and put a pilot program into effect to reduce the adult-child ratio in elementary school classes.

* Consider a “newcomers program” to allow the district to cope better with an increasing influx of foreign students, mostly Latino, who come as teen-agers without knowing English or having schooling even in their native countries.

* Get more teeth into the way teachers and principals are evaluated as a way of improving accountability of educators for boosting student achievement. In return, individual schools would get more power in determining how they operate.

Payzant said later that he was “very pleased, obviously,” with the salary increase and the contract extension, adding that he has a “gentleman’s agreement” with the board not to seek another position for at least two years. Payzant said he was surprised to learn only last month that he was not the highest paid school official in San Diego County, explaining that smaller suburban districts across the country often have been able to offer higher salaries during the past decade.

He said that after 21 years of working with various boards of education, “there is always room for improvement and I’m willing to receive recommendations for doing so.”

As evidence of his willingness, Payzant pointed to the new list of two-year district goals and objectives presented to the board Tuesday for approval on June 19 after review and comment by principals, teachers and parents.

The two major goals, the outlines of which trustees discussed at a special retreat last month, call for:

* Improving standardized test scores at all schools where the scores are below state averages in reading, direct writing, and mathematics. By June, 1992, a school will be asked to reduce the gap by one-half between scores of its students and the overall district test averages, which are higher than those of the state. The goal will use the California Achievement Program tests (CAP) because those state tests measure a student’s ability to reason and manipulate skills better than other tests which emphasize more the recitation of basic skills, Payzant said.

* Reducing the dropout rate by June 1991 by 10% at all schools with grades 9-12 compared to the previous year. Schools with grades kindergarten-through-eighth grade will be asked to aim for a 15% decrease. And the district’s numerous dropout recovery programs will be asked for a 16% cumulative gain in the number of dropouts returned to district schools.