Trib: Mt. Lebanon superintendent to get 3.5% raise

The Mt. Lebanon school board has unanimously approved a 3.5 percent pay raise for Superintendent Timothy Steinhauer, citing his work holding the line on taxes, reorganizing the district's administration and guiding the high school renovation project through its redesign.

Steinhauer's yearly salary increased from $146,300 to $151,420, retroactive to July 1, district spokeswoman Cissy Bowman said. The board on Monday also approved increasing his vacation days from 20 to 25, and agreed that he could be paid for up to 15 vacation days if they went unused at the end of each year.

Read the full article:

• www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_752027.html (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

Superintendent announces school-district reorganization (Updated 2)

Updated 2011-04-05 23:55 with additional links.
Update 2011-04-06 14:52: Referred to Jo Posti answering some questions about the reorganization.

In an interesting change (shake-up?) at the school district, superintendent Dr. Timothy Steinhauer announced a reorganization of some top spots.

“These changes are designed to improve student learning, communication, coordination, and consistency throughout the District,” Dr. Steinhauer wrote.

Under what is being called the “first step” of the reorganization, there will be two changes:

One: “The reappointment of Dr. Deborah Allen in a new role as the Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education and the appointment of Dr. Ronald Davis as the Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education.”

Two: “By the start of the 2013–14 school year, all curriculum supervisor positions will be eliminated. Individuals currently holding these positions will be able to move into other positions within the District over the next two years.”

It’s not clear what the next steps of reorganization will be. For now, the superintendent is “asking for patience” and promises to have more information after the April 18, 2011, school-board meeting, at which the school board is expected to vote on the announced changes.

I wonder what’s coming up.

Update: On her blog, Center Court, school-board president Jo Posti has answered some questions about the reorganization. They are:

• When will other positions impacted by the reorganization be announced?
• Is this announcement a reaction to the District's current or future budget situation?
• Will there be staffing changes within the teaching staff?
• Why now?

The answers are not particularly direct or informative. Still, one thing did catch my eye:

Once the plan is fully implemented, there will be a significant savings to the District, ...

Interesting.

Also reporting on the reorganization:

• Letter from Dr. Steinhauer (Lebo Citizens Blog)
• Reorganization Announced (Center Court, the blog of Jo Posti, president of the school board)
  
• Questions About The Reorganization (Center Court, the blog of Jo Posti, president of the school board)
  

Mt. Lebanon Mom Holds School District Accountable by Blogging (Update)

Updated 2010-10-27 11:00 with follow-up from Mrs. Stang.

Last week when Sadie Stang received her son Niko’s evaluation report from the Mt. Lebanon school district, she couldn’t believe how many mistakes it contained. In one paragraph alone, her family found no fewer than six spelling errors. More troubling, portions of the report were hard to understand, in places almost incomprehensible.

“These evaluations are done every three years by the school district. They should be of the utmost importance. If this report was put together so carelessly, how can I trust that it is an accurate assessment of my child?” she said.

Mrs. Stang said that her family has received other reports from the school district that also contained obvious errors. But this report was riddled with them.

“I have never seen anything quite like this one,” she said.

Rather than address her concerns to the school district, Mrs. Stang decided to do something else. She went public.

On Thursday, 21 October, 2010, she wrote about the report on her blog, “PJ’s and clay and autism... oh my.” In a post called Say it ain’t so, she presented her readers with a single page of Niko’s re-evaluation report. Her 18-year-old daughter, Alexandra, a recent graduate of the Mt. Lebanon school district, had proofread the page, circling the errors. The page was littered with circles.

Shortly after the post appeared on Mrs. Stang’s blog, word began to spread, soon reaching the school district. Within hours, the school superintendent himself, Dr. Timothy Steinhauer, emailed Mrs. Stang about the report, echoing her dissatisfaction and promising a corrected version shortly.

The email, however, did not have the intended effect. Its opening words were “Dear Ms. Stand.” Mrs. Stang’s name had been misspelled. It was an innocent mistake, but hard to ignore, given the circumstances.

“It put salt in the wound, to say the least,” she said.

Dr. Steinhauer quickly followed up with an apology, but the first impression had taken hold, with Mrs. Stang forwarding his email to the entire school board and posting a copy on her blog.

The school district, citing confidentially requirements for personnel and student matters, declined to comment on the specifics of this story. A spokesperson, explaining the evaluations in general, said that evaluation reports are presented to parents in draft form and then finalized during meetings that include parents, teachers, and relevant administrators.

Mrs. Stang said that the report she received was not marked as a draft.

And that’s where things stand at present: one family, angry and frustrated; one school district, not looking its best; and one community, watching to see what will happen.

If there’s a lesson to be drawn from all this, it’s that email and blogging have altered the balance between schools and parents. In the past, aggrieved parents had little choice but to follow the arcane policies of schools and governments to have their complaints heard. Now parents have a new option: go straight to the public.

In this case, exercising that option drew a speedy response from the school district’s superintendent – effectively the CEO of a $100-million company. That’s more than most parents with similar problems could have hoped for ten years ago.

Will that response be enough? As of this writing, Mrs. Stang is still waiting for that corrected report from the school district to arrive. When she gets it, what will it say?

My guess is Mrs. Stang won’t hesitate to let us know. Just watch her blog.

Update (Wednesday, 27 October, 2010)

In the comments for this story, Mrs. Stang has written to Blog-Lebo with an update about the whereabouts of the revised report she was promised. She says that she learned this morning that the report was emailed on Friday – but not to her.

“You’re never going to believe this one. This important document was emailed to the wrong email address,” she writes.

She’s now concerned that her son’s evaluation report, supposedly confidential, may have been sent to a complete stranger.

P-G: Mt. Lebanon school board extends superintendent's contract

The Mt. Lebanon school board on Monday night approved a 4.5 percent raise for superintendent Timothy Steinhauer and extended his contract expiration date one year to June 30, 2014.

Dr. Steinhauer was hired by the district in June 2009 with a contract that ran through June 30, 2013, and a salary of $140,000.

Read the full article:

• www.postgazette.com/pg/10292/1096402-100.stm (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

School Board to Give New School Superintendent a Raise and Contract Extension (Updated 2)

Update 2010-10-18: As expected, the school board voted at tonight’s meeting to extend the superintendent’s contract by one year and raise his salary by 4.5 percent. The first vote was unanimous; the second 8-1, with James Fraasch dissenting.

[There’s been a lot of discussion about whether giving the new school superintendent a raise and a contract extension is a good idea, given the school district’s well-publicized problems of late. The Blog-Lebo portion of that discussion has occurred, so far, as an off-shoot of a completely unrelated story. But it’s clear that there’s interest enough in the topic to merit a story of its own, so here it is. —Tom]

On Monday, 11 October, 2010, the school board revealed at its discussion meeting that it intends to extend the contract of the new school superintendent, Dr. Timothy Steinhauer.

Steinhauer was hired by the school board on 8 June, 2009, to replace superintendent John Allison, who had left the school district after receiving an attractive offer from Wichita Public Schools in Kansas.

Steinhauer’s contract was to expire on 30 June, 2013, but the school board, expressing praise for Steinhauer and his performance, intends to extend it by one year at the school-board meeting on 18 October, 2010. The extended contract will expire on 30 June, 2014.

“I have been pleased with [Steinhauer’s] performance... We have suffered from a little uncertainty in the superintendent’s position in the previous couple of years, and I hope that by the contract extension and other provisions we can secure the position for Dr. Steinhauer, for the foreseeable future,” said Ed Kubit, president of the school board, during Monday’s discussion meeting.

The school board also intends to give Steinhauer a 4.5% raise, increasing his starting salary of $140,000 per year to $146,300.

What do you think?

I’ve already revealed that I’m taking a favorable view of the raise and contract extension, a view I expect many people to find surprising. Based on the emails I’m getting, I know many of you don’t agree with me. So if you have something to say, either way, now’s your chance: Let’s hear it.

Updated 2010-10-17 15:20 with quotation from Ed Kubit, school board president.

High School Project Delayed by Traffic and Safety Concerns

According to the Tribune-Review, the high-school project has been detained at another municipal checkpoint, this time by the Planning Board:

Until the Mt. Lebanon School District can address concerns brought up by municipal traffic engineers, formal approval of the $113.3 million high school renovation will have to wait... While the [school] district contends the design is best from an educational standpoint, municipal officials expressed concerns based on zoning, parking and, now, traffic and safety considerations.

The Post-Gazette's coverage of the Planning Board meeting, where the school district's plans failed to meet approval on Tuesday, suggests that such problems are not unusual when complicated projects are first submitted to the planning board:

For a project of the size and scope of the planned high school renovation, it would have been unusual for the high school to receive preliminary land development approval at its first meeting with the planning board, municipal planner Keith McGill said.

The school district's outlook is predictably upbeat, with superintendent Dr. Timothy Steinhauer being "very confident with where we are going from here," reports the Post-Gazette.

One wrinkle, which the Tribune-Review did not overlook, is parking spaces. The planning board, citing visibility and maneuverability concerns, suggested that some half-dozen spaces be eliminated. But earlier this year, if you will recall, the school district's plans were found in violation of municipal zoning code because they didn't include adequate parking, a finding that the school district has appealed to the Court of Common Pleas.

The district's appeal rests, in part, on the notion that the planned renovation would make the high school conform to zoning code more than it does today: the new design adds 3 parking spaces, increasing the total from 502 to 505 (of the required 528). But if the district removes 6 of those spaces to improve visibility and maneuverability, it can no longer claim that its new design is more conforming to zoning code; it will be even less conforming than it is today. Thus, to meet traffic and safety requirements, the school district may have to undermine the foundation of its zoning appeal.

Read more:

• Traffic, safety issues stall approval for Mt. Lebanon high school (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
• Mt. Lebanon board tables step in project (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Updated 2010-06-24 16:59 to clarify the parking concerns.

Changes Could Boost Mt. Lebanon In Rankings

The Mt. Lebanon School District discussed two changes at its meeting this week that could move the high school higher in local, state and national rankings.

The first change would require students to achieve a proficient or advanced score in the 11th grade Pennsylvania System of School Assessments in order to graduate. The other proposed change would make the high school a participant in the National School Lunch Program.

Read more: www.post-gazette.com/pg/10168/1066354-298.stm

Mt. Lebanon’s New Superintendent Dr. Timothy Steinhauer Outlines Plan For Change

Dr. Timothy Steinhauer has only been on the job as superintendent of Mt. Lebanon School District for a few months, but he’s already implementing plans to improve student achievement.

Mt. Lebanon School District ranked third on this year’s list of school districts in western Pennsylvania.

Read more: www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2010/05/03/daily48.html

Efforts Won't Impact Budget

NOTE: The following article is a letter to the editor written by Mt. Lebanon resident John Kendrick.

Dr. Timothy Steinhauser's efforts are misdirected and will leave very little impact on the astronomical budget of the Mt. Lebanon School District.

The largest expense in the district budget is employee salaries. At this point, we won't have any meaningful impact on reducing expenses until we start reducing the payroll.

Unlike many Fortune 500 firms that employ a Rating and Ranking system, public school employees and their school board counterparts [like Mt. Lebanon] have vehemently opposed any program to assess the quality of their workforce using teacher competency testing that would systematically drop the bottom 10 percent each year from their payroll.

Further, the district will not consider an on-going effort to reduce costs like a kaizen goal of a 10 percent annual cost reduction. Until efforts are in place to change the DNA of the organization so that a focus on savings becomes as important as delivering services we will continue to see efforts like Dr. Steinhauser's resulting in a 1-2 percent savings, at best.

Read more: www.thealmanac.net/ALM/Story/04-21-2010-Mt--Lebanon-Kendrick