Jose Fernandez, the Centinela Valley school superintendent who amassed $663,000 in total compensation last year, has been formally evaluated by the school board only once since he was given one of the most lucrative contracts in the state in 2009.
Fernandez’s contract called for automatic renewal should he not be evaluated at the end of any given school year. It appears that this happened in every year save for fall of 2011, when then-board member Sandra Suarez — his biggest critic — demanded that the board conduct one.
“It kept getting postponed and postponed,” said Suarez, who lost her seat later that year to Lorena Gonzalez, the only new member of the five-member board. “Finally, they did one. And it was a joke.”
Fernandez, who since 2008 has headed up a district consisting of three comprehensive high schools in Hawthorne and Lawndale, has a base salary of about $271,000. But his contract — which calls for an annual raise of 9 percent, plus a cost-of-living adjustment — is so loaded with perks and stipends that, in calendar year 2013, the total compensation package came to more than $663,000, according to documents obtained from the Los Angeles County Office of Education. (About $215,000 of that came from one-time costs.)
Hiring and firing a school district superintendent is generally considered the most important charge assigned a locally elected school board. Suzanne Meraz, a spokeswoman with the California School Boards Association, said she believes it is custom for school boards across the state to conduct one evaluation of a superintendent every school year.
It happens once a year in the Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes unified school districts, said Sandra Goins, executive director of South Bay United Teachers, the umbrella union for teachers for those districts as well as Centinela Valley.
“There’s a lot of talk about teachers being evaluated now, and I think teachers should be evaluated,” she said. “By the same token, the administrators and the district administrators need to be held to those same high standards.”
It also happens once a year in the Torrance Unified School District, said school board member Michael Wermers.
“We all sign the document — it’s very official,” he said. “In any sense of the word, they are not trivial.”
Officials in Centinela Valley say Fernandez has been evaluated several times.
“It is my understanding and belief that the board formally evaluated the superintendent prior to making him superintendent and before extending his contract, in addition to at least two informal evaluations,” said Bob Cox, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources.
Cox did not elaborate on what constitutes an informal evaluation. But Gonzalez, who joined the board in late 2011, told the Daily Breeze on Wednesday that she has not yet conducted an evaluation. Suarez said the board conducted only one since Fernandez became a permanent leader in late 2008. The three other board members could not be reached for comment.
Suarez said the evaluation process was conducted so hastily that the district didn’t even have evaluation forms for the board members. She said board member Hugo Rojas — a former school board trustee in Hawthorne — had to bring a copy of that district’s evaluation form to use as a template.
“It was just absurd,” said Suarez, who was once censured by her board colleagues on the basis that her frequent inquiries were a drain on district resources. “It wasn’t done at all professionally, the way it should have been.”
Cox declined to provide the Daily Breeze a copy of any evaluations, citing personnel confidentiality laws. But Suarez provided a copy of hers.
Not all of the marks were negative. She gave Fernandez the top rating on about a third of the 60 questions, such as this one: “Informs the board and general public in an annual report or in a series of reports on the state of the schools in the district.”
She gave him the lowest rating on 10 items. On an item pertaining to “taking an active role in (the) development of salary schedules … which, within budgetary limitations, will best serve the interests of the district,” she gave him the lowest rating.
And she added a comment: “Score should be less. Gives himself allowances, perks and stipends but is not fair in compared (sic) to what workers and teachers should be getting.”
Fernandez became the interim superintendent in early 2008, after his predecessor, Cheryl White, was fired from the post. He became the permanent leader by a narrow 3-2 vote in late 2008.
In April 2009, Fernandez received the first 9 percent raise. Although the adjustment boosted his salary to a still fairly modest $163,000, teachers at the time were livid. About 100 of them held a demonstration at Leuzinger High School in Lawndale to protest the hike while they were facing the prospect of mass layoffs.
In November 2009, a dramatic local election would later prove a boon for Fernandez. The two incumbents supported by the teachers union — and who voted against making Fernandez the permanent superintendent — were replaced by former Hawthorne school board member Hugo Rojas and then-23-year-old Maritza Molina, who had just graduated from UC Santa Barbara.
To this day, Rojas and Molina, along with longtime board member Rocio Pizano, have been loyal supporters of Fernandez. In December 2009 — about a month after they were elected — the three of them, along with Suarez and current board member Gloria Ramos, unanimously approved Fernandez’s employment contract.
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