Chicago school board OKs top execs’ salaries

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Chicago Teachers Union officers and members protest at the Chicago Public Schools headquarters Wednesday, demanding that CPS negotiate over budget priorities. | Jean Lachat~Sun-Times Media

Updated: October 28, 2011 11:25AM

Despite the protests of teachers angered over losing pay raises, Chicago’s new school board agreed Wednesday to pay five new top executives more than their predecessors.

Hours after more than 1,000 jeering teachers ringed the block around the board of education meeting, board members voted to pay Chicago Public Schools chief executive Jean-Claude Brizard $250,000 a year, make him eligible for up to $37,500 a year in performance bonuses, pay him $30,000 to move his family from Rochester, N.Y., and give him a free car and driver for school business.

His base salary is $20,000 higher than that of predecessor Ron Huberman and outstrips that of all other city executives, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, except for new police Supt. Garry McCarthy. Officials called Brizard’s base salary “on par” with most big-city school districts.

Brizard is the first Chicago Public Schools CEO since the position was created in 1995 to receive a contract. The 18-page pact for the first time requires that the CEO’s performance be reviewed annually.

It sets a three-year goal of improving everything from third-grade reading scores to college enrollment and persistence rates, while also establishing annual goals to reduce dropout rates and improve ACT scores and achievement gaps.

In addition, the contract asks Brizard to design and implement a “performance-based reward system for leadership and pilot a model with school-based employees’’ — something Emanuel has strongly endorsed.

Three other top CPS executives will get salaries that are at least roughly $35,000 higher than their predecessors. Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley ($215,000), will oversee four more departments than his predecessor; Chief Communications Officer Becky Carroll ($165,000), who said she will oversee both internal and external communications, and Chief of Staff Andrea Saenz ($165,000).

Chief Education Officer Noemi Donoso’s $195,000 salary is up only slightly from that of her predecessor.

Emanuel endorsed the new salaries as well as a decision to give Cawley, a Winnetka resident, two years to meet the city’s residency requirement instead of the normal six months. That means his recently adopted daughter can complete eighth grade in the suburbs.

School board president David Vitale defended the top officials’ pay as “competitive and appropriate.’’

But teachers who were told last week that the deficit-ridden school system did not have the money for their scheduled 4 percent raises did not see it that way.

“They are giving raises to administrators but not to teachers,” said Harlan High Schoolteacher Patricia Boughton as she marched with the throng down Clark Street. “We deserve it. What have they done to prove they deserve it? They have done nothing. ... It’s outrageous.”

Contributing: Fran Spielman