SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - After a six-month-long search, the San Francisco school board has hired a new superintendent for an annual $255,000 — a salary and benefits package that is less than what former embattled Superintendent Arlene Ackerman received before she left the district last June.

Tuesday night, the school board voted 6-1 to approve a one-page employment agreement with Carlos Garcia, the former superintendent of the Clark County School District in Las Vegas from 2000 to 2005. The new schools chief was raised in Los Angeles and was a principal of San Francisco’s Horace Mann Middle School from 1988 to 1991.

Board member Kim-Shree Maufas cast the sole “no” vote, saying the board did not have enough time to make a proper choice.

Garcia, 55, will permanently take over for interim Superintendent Gwen Chan, who led the district for the last year, on July 16. Although Chan announced plans to retire on July 1, the district will keep her on through August for $27,900 to help transition Garcia into his new role as chief of a system with 56,000 students at more than 100 campuses.

Mayor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday said Garcia, who started his career in education as a teacher, has a “tremendous amount of commitment and enthusiasm and resolve and energy.”

Most board members made reference Tuesday night that Garcia was not 100 percent “perfect” for the job, but expressed excitement for the education veteran to join the district.

“He brings strong urban progressive leadership,” school board member Eric Mar said.

Under the three-year contract, Garcia will receive a one-time $30,000 relocation and signing bonus, an annual $8,000 vehicle allowance and a monthly $2,500 housing stipend. As an incentive, Garcia will be eligible for an annuity and payouts of any unused vacation time after two years. Both Garcia and his wife will also be eligible for lifetime health benefits after five years.

Garcia’s contract with the district is comparable to the pay of other superintendents in similar-size systems across the country. The Boston School District, for example, serves 57,000 students and compensates its superintendent about $284,000 in salary and benefits, according to a memo from district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe.

A survey of 60 districts, including those in Oakland, Los Angeles, New York and Baltimore, showed superintendent salaries in 2003 ranging between $120,000 to $325,000, with the average at $197,000, according to the Council of Great City Schools.

Garcia’s deal with San Francisco Unified, however, is less than what Ackerman received when she resigned a year ago after it was determined she and board members could not work compatibly. Although Ackerman resigned at an annual salary of $250,000, Blythe said she was also paid $140,000 in annual benefits, including medical, dental and contributions to her retirement account.

“It’s not the base salary, but other benefits in the package” that make up that difference, Blythe said.

San Francisco schools’ new head Carlos Garcia starts July 16

Contract: July 16 to June 30, 2010

Annual salary: $255,000

Vehicle allowance: $8,000/year

Relocation and signing bonus: $30,000

Housing stipend: $2,500/month

Health benefits: For life after five years

- Source: SFUSD

Ex-schools chief drops lawsuit

Former San Francisco schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman dropped her lawsuit against the school district Monday, saying in a letter to the Board of Education that she has “no desire to see any more of the children’s money squandered” on legal and political entanglements.

Ackerman sued the San Francisco Unified School District in May, claiming it had failed to pay her nearly $170,000 in benefits that she was owed under a severance agreement.

The superintendent left the district a year ago, shortly after the board increased her annual salary to $250,000, agreed to pay her $375,000 if she left early and included an “incompatibility” clause in her contract. Under the clause, either the board or superintendent could cite irreconcilable differences and terminate the contract.

While Ackerman collected the $375,000 after resigning, she later sued the district for about $170,000 in vacation days and sick leave, which the lawsuit said she was owed under her contract.

On Monday, Ackerman sent a letter to the board, saying she had advised her attorney to drop the lawsuit against the district. She has found “greater satisfaction,” she wrote, knowing her controversial severance package, challenged in a separate lawsuit that was dismissed, was valid.

“I am content with knowing that I left the school district a better place for children than I found it,” she wrote, concluding the letter by wishing the board and the new district superintendent, Carlos Garcia, success.

arocha@examiner.com

Comments from Examiner Readers

8:25 PM MST on Thu., Jul. 19, 2007 re: "S.F. City Hall, new schools chief off to good start"

bruzlee said:
if he going to be like the last one, what's her name, Hackerman? trying to stay until she's retired. this was what's she was after. a school board should be local, someone who's educated here. not someone from kentucky.

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5:41 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007 re: "New S.F. schools chief begins unenviable job"

Examiner Reader said:
In the end, parents have a much bigger impact on their children's education than schools. Parents who let their children go out on school nights are guaranteeing their children's failure in school. Make them stay at home, and sit with them while they do homework - that will virtually guarantee success. Too many schools, too many administrators, too much money spent on busing. Cut the fat, and push the additional money to bring resources to southeast and other underperforming schools. Years ago, the school board kicked the Boy Scouts out of the schools. They promised a replacement program - none exists today. They kicked out ROTC, without any replacement program. In both cases, they chose the interests of adults over children. That tells you where the interest of the board lies.

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2:52 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007 re: "New S.F. schools chief begins unenviable job"

Examiner Reader said:
With the Board's political agenda and the teachers union's full-employment agenda, the new guy will have little chance of bringing quality to the schools. He needs to close schools, weed out ineffective employees, cut the administrators, and emphasize academic basics. All "English Learners" should be in English immersion. Nothing holds immigrants back more than their inability to speak English.

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2:31 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007 re: "School board hires new supe, Ackerman drops suit"

skeptical reader and good speller said:
To equate the dissolution of the ROTC program with racism (sceptical reader - sceptic is right!) is absurd. Others would argue that a military program that targets minorities as more expendable in war time is racist, they are the right ones.

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2:18 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007 re: "S.F. schools chief aims to fix achievement gap"

Examiner Reader said:
- He left Horace Mann years ago and it was performing just fine when he left. - Gwen Chan doesn't want the job. I can't imagine why not. - The Superintendent is an administrator. The Board of Education sets policy. Keep that in mind when you are deciding who to criticize. I wish him the best of luck with this District. And why not? Why anticipate failure? If you want our most vulnerable students to succeed, you should hope that a new Superintendent can help them.

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12:28 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007 re: "New S.F. schools chief begins unenviable job"

Examiner Reader said:
so what did he accomplish at horace mann? it is now one of the lowest performing schools in the district.. guess tht doesn't matter since ackermann left the DC schools in disarray (they still are) and got a better job here (made off like a bandit here too!!!) history repeats itself, all over again, and again, and again

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12:28 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007 re: "New S.F. schools chief begins unenviable job"

Examiner Reader said:
so what did he accomplish at horace mann? it is now one of the lowest performing schools in the district.. guess tht doesn't matter since ackermann left the DC schools in disarray (they still are) and got a better job here (made off like a bandit here too!!!) history repeats itself, all over again, and again, and again

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7:22 PM MST on Wed., Jun. 13, 2007 re: "School board hires new supe, Ackerman drops suit"

Examiner Reader said:
uhh.... that's a lot of money.... i say keep Gwen Chan, she's doing a fantastic job! the one thing the school district needs to clean up is the fact that students still need to travel across the city to attend school rather than attend local schools. that needs to be fixed, JROTC is a good program but we have more important things to fix and that is getting students to the school districts they belong to. If people consider it racist because asians would be attending Lincoln and Lowell and Latinos - mission then i think there needs to be a change in how students get accepted into schools.

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5:56 PM MST on Wed., Jun. 13, 2007 re: "School board hires new supe, Ackerman drops suit"

Sceptical reader said:
I give the new superintendent 2 years before he bails out. This school board is more interested in forwarding their political agenda than they are in educating students. At some point in time those interests will clash, and they will throw more kids under the bus, as they have repeatedly done, most recently by eliminating ROTC, a proven, successful program (with nothing to replace it). I don't agree with the US military policy on gays, but the school board ignored their responsibility to students inn order to make political points with the most powerful political group in SF, one that happens to be predominatly White and Male. Denying these predominately minority children the right to hear what ROTC has to say smacks of racism.

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