The Albemarle County School Board voted unanimously at its June 12 meeting to increase its own annual compensation from $7,915 to $16,249. Chief Human Resources Officer Dan Redding presented the board with comparative salary data from 13 other boards across Virginia, which showed members earning between $5,000 and $28,000 across a range of division sizes. Redding noted that “ACPS strives to provide compensation at the 60th percentile for our comparative market,” which would be $15,600.
Board member Judy Le said that she’d always felt it was important to the board to pay people appropriately for their work, “except us.” “I think it would be very hard for someone who didn’t have the amount of privilege that I have to serve in a role like this,” she said. “And I think that really diminishes our power to truly represent our constituents.”
“I think a lot of members of the community think we just show up twice a month [for School Board meetings], but this is the tip of the iceberg of what we do,” said Chair Kate Acuff. “For anyone who is curious why we’re doing this at this meeting, these decisions have to be made [per state code] between May and the end of June on a year during which at least two members of the board are running for their School Board seats. So, it’s not every year this can be changed, and this is the first time since we started talking about it two or three years ago where the stars aligned.”…