School Board OKs updates to supe’s performance pay plan

The Maricopa Unified School District Governing Board was shorthanded due to illness for their meeting Wednesday night.

Despite having just three members available for discussing agenda items (and no members of the public in attendance), the board still tackled updates to the district’s personnel schedule, superintendent performance pay plan and updates to staff salary regulations.

With little updates to the district since deciding to pursue a 10 percent override over the next seven years in the November 2016 election, the district only had four items to vote on. After quickly approving the personnel schedule and staff salary regulation updates, the board briefly discussed changes to the superintendent performance pay plan.

The previous plan adjusted the performance pay for the superintendent on district grades based off of state testing scores. Since the state tests changed during the 2014-15 school year, MUSD superintendent Steve Chestnut asked the board to adjust the performance pay scale to reflect to district’s scores from the new state testing requirements.

However, the new AzMERIT tests are considered more difficult than the previous AIMS testing. MUSD, along with many districts around the state, saw their scores drop from previous AIMS test averages.

“We didn’t do as well as we had hoped (on the new AzMERIT tests),” Chestnut said. “Overall, we were not above the state average. So that is an example of improvements we need to make.”

The low scores concerned MUSD Governing Board member Gary Miller, but he also saw the low initial scores as an opportunity to build.

“I think that’s an important indicator as administrators,” Miller said. “[The scores are] almost like building your foundation on sand instead of rock. Hopefully we’ll be able to have a solid foundation and actually be able to measure outcomes to incorporate a better policy.”

Since most districts saw a drop in test scores, MUSD Governing Board president Patti Coutre wasn’t discouraged to hear the results.

“I don’t think there was any district that didn’t see a decrease in their scores,” Coutre said. “I believe that was across the state, and that was the whole goal for the AzMERIT system.”

The Governing Board unanimously voted to approve the performance pay plan for the superintendent.

The board will reconvene on Dec. 16 at 6:30 p.m.