East Aurora School District 131’s two interim superintendents were in the office for a combined roughly 150 days between the beginning of July 2016 and the end of July 2017, records show.
During that time, they were paid a combined $226,600, or more than $110,000 each, according to pay records, expense reports and time cards obtained by the Beacon-News.
The two interim superintendents, Mark McDonald and Marion Hoyda, were not hired at annual salaries. Instead, their contracts specified they would be paid $1,000 for each workday lasting 10 hours or less and $1,200 for each day running longer. Their contracts did not set a number of days each would work other than specifying it could be up to 100 per year, the maximum allowed before each retired superintendent could face pension penalties.
East Aurora school board members are now weighing their options for leadership of the district next school year, including the possibility of looking at internal and external candidates. They initially included among their options retaining the two interim superintendents for another year, though McDonald said recently he thought the district should move to a full-time superintendent. Hoyda has also since resigned, and her last day is set for Sept. 29.
McDonald and Hoyda began working in the district in July 2016, and school board member Kim Hatchett said at that time the board hoped to have a permanent superintendent in place for the current school year. The interim superintendents’ contracts were later extended for a second year, at which time Hatchett said the district was not ready to start a superintendent search process.
Between July 1, 2016 and July 31, 2017, McDonald was paid $111,000 for about 107 days of work. Hoyda was paid $115,600 for 103 days of work during that time plus additional money for mileage and for her work as a consultant in East Aurora before she became interim superintendent, records show.
School Board President Annette Johnson said she felt the number of days each superintendent worked and the pay they received were reasonable, pointing out they often worked days longer than 10 hours.
“They did accomplish things that other people weren’t ever able to accomplish,” she said. “Regular superintendents that we had in the district working full time were never able to accomplish some of the things they accomplished.”
Many of Hoyda’s and McDonald’s workdays overlapped. But other days, neither interim superintendent was in the district, records show.
In one instance, records show neither superintendent billed any hours on the Friday afternoon in December 2016 that a fight broke out among students across from East Aurora High School and two teens were stabbed. Two days later, on Sunday, Hoyda billed hours for work she described as organizing a response to a student’s suicide, according to a handwritten note on a time card.
Johnson said a superintendent typically would not be involved in what she called “disciplinary issues” such as the December fight and stabbing. That would be the responsibility of the high school principal and certain district administrators.
She said the circumstances surrounding the student’s suicide were not common in the district, and Hoyda stepped in because she did not feel the district had adequate procedures in place to address it.
McDonald, too, said the district has staff in place to handle situations such as the fight and stabbing, and the staff was doing so. If either superintendent felt they needed to be there, they would have been, he said.
Hoyda did not respond to requests for comment sent through the district spokesman.
McDonald said he thought the number of days he worked and the pay he received was reasonable, and it was what he and the school board agreed to. His contract obligates him to notify the school board when he has worked 70 days in one fiscal year, he said.
“I just want to make sure I’m covering enough to cover the school year and not run afoul of the teacher retirement system,” he said.
The schedule did pose challenges, he said. His responsibilities as interim superintendent were constant, and he set expectations for himself to remain on top of all of them which was difficult when he was limited in the number of days he could work, he said.
“It’s not intended that we would be the next full-time superintendent,” he said. “It’s intended that we would be a sort of stopgap measure, give the board time to evaluate what they want to do going forward.”
He said if the setup was not working out, the district could move on from the interims or they could move on from the district. He described the setup as a “low risk and relatively low-cost option.”
Johnson called Hoyda’s and McDonald’s work in the district “a winning combination.” Full-time superintendents can miss days of work using vacation days or sick days, and in addition to their salaries the district has typically paid pension costs, annuities and other benefits that can add up, she said.
Among the accomplishments Johnson listed for the two interim superintendents were McDonald’s hiring many staffers for the district office. The two put a regular, everyday busing program in place for the first time in the district’s known history, and stabilized some district departments that have been in turmoil in recent years, she said.
“I do feel they’ve had some major accomplishments that will probably change the scope of the community,” she said.
McDonald said he does not intend or expect to continue to be an interim superintendent in East Aurora next year. The superintendent should set the vision for an organization, and an interim is not in a position to do that as a temporary leader, he said.
Still, he said, the interim superintendents have been able to contribute to the district.
“Our contribution is we have a lot of experiential knowledge,” he said. “Not only do we have an understanding of how things are supposed to work in a school district like this, we know how to make them happen.”
The interim superintendents’ work days and pay are not factors board members are considering as they embark on a search for a full-time superintendent, Johnson said. She would have liked to see them stay on for a third year, she said, but that likely will not happen.
