GSuperintendent John O'Brien Contract TRS Correction

Background Information:

Directors/Assistant Superintendents and Superintendents work their stated 234 or 230 work day contracts within the full July 1 to June 30 fiscal year. In addition to those work days they receive either 26 or 30 days of annual leave. Those annual leave days, when used, do not reduce the number of work days they are required to be on-the-job. If they did, those administrators would only be on-the-job for either 208 (234 minus 26) or 200 (230 minus 30) days. If they were to also use their 12 days of universal leave (Directors/Assistant Superintendents) or 8 days of personal leave (Superintendents), which do not count as work days, they could only be working 196 or 192 days, not much more than teachers.

As the Board knows, Directors, Assistant Superintendents, and Superintendents work in June, July, and early August because their workload so requires. Therefore, those employees are encouraged to take annual leave prior to the summer months so they have work days to use during the summer. In many cases, they are unable to take more than 20 days of annual leave because of their workload needs. As a result, their contracts allow for a number of those annual leave days to be cashed out. Directors and Assistant Superintendents can cash out 12 days, and the Superintendent can cash out 10 days. Although the contractual term “cashed out” is used, it actually means that they work 12 or 10 additional days, and are paid for 246 or 240 work days as the case may be. The “cash out” amount is the same amount of the salary earned for those additional work days. Since they work those cashed out days, the compensation earned for those days is considered additional TRS compensation for retirement benefit purposes.

The phrase “and be considered days worked” is added in the Director and Assistant Superintendent contracts to TRS eligible. That is the intent and purpose of that language, and the cash out of annual leave.

That language is not applicable to the cash out of universal leave/personal leave days because such days are included in the 234 or 230 days. When such days are not used as time off, but rather worked, there is no increase in the 234 or 230 contract work days, or the salary. That is why the phrase “and be considered days worked” is not used in those contracts because it is not applicable as there is no additional compensation for TRS eligibility. In other words, when an employee is absent, they can either take universal/personal leave to make up for that contract day or they can work another day to make sure that they meet all of the required days under the contract. However, in total the employee does not get to add contract days simply by cashing in unused universal/personal leave.

When Superintendent O’Brien went from an Assistant Superintendent to Interim Superintendent, an addendum to his Assistant Superintendent Contract was used. Unfortunately, the phrase “and be considered days worked” in the annual leave language of his Assistant Superintendent contract was incorrectly placed in the personal leave language of his current Superintendent Contract and not in the annual leave language. That misplacement has been corrected in Article 4 e. of the Contract now before you on the consent agenda. The correction is consistent with the intent and purpose of annual leave, and not consistent with the intent and purpose of the language for personal leave, where it was erroneously placed. It is important to make this correction in order to avoid issues with TRS in the future and in order to prevent from misleading future employees from believing that leave may be eligible for TRS when it legally is not. The District strives for openness in its contracts and correcting this error will ensure that all parties properly capture TRS rules and the intent of the parties at the time of contract.