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Teachers and residents press board on discipline, transparency and administrative salaries
Summary
Public commenters urged the board to revisit administrative pay and to give building principals clearer authority on discipline; district leaders outlined updates to the student code of conduct and said they will retrain principals on due process and referral documentation.
Two public commenters addressed board priorities: concerns about administrative salaries and a call for principals to have more discretion in school discipline.
Donna Patterson, a resident and former board member, criticized what she described as a growing number of administrators and rising administrator salaries. She said she counted “over 30 administrators” and expressed concern that some salaries were substantially higher—singling out a salary increase that she said rose to $150,000—and urged the board and superintendent to review administrative pay for sustainability.
Corinna Gillespie, who identified herself as a teacher and parent in the district, urged the board and superintendent to “trust our building principals and their teams to make decisions,” particularly on discipline. Gillespie said that principals and their staffs need the authority to manage day-to-day discipline and that relying primarily on district-level gatekeeping can “handicap thousands of students and parents” by delaying or limiting building-level responses.
District response and policy work: Later in the meeting, district leaders discussed updates to the student code of conduct and disciplinary processes. Staff said the code has been revised and reorganized into three levels, with level-3 offenses leading to out-of-school suspension. Officials said they will retrain principals to ensure due process is followed and that referral documentation is entered and reviewed in PowerSchool. The presentation warned that improved documentation will likely raise recorded discipline numbers, not necessarily reflect increased incidents, because more events are now being documented.
Why it matters: The public comments and staff update touch on resource allocation, local control of discipline decisions and transparency in incident reporting — all areas with direct effects on students, staff and families.
Ending: District leaders said they will continue to refine the referral and documentation process, provide additional principal training and monitor discipline trends as documentation and practices change.
