Both Superintendent James Konrad and Assistant Superintendent Rae Lin Howard received 4% raises in August 2024, but only one of them was on the agenda this August.

Konrad’s raise was up for a vote, but not Howard’s. This raised a community question about why it was missing.

In August 2024, the school board approved both raises in a 6-1 vote. Two directors were absent from the meeting.

As a result, Howard’s salary increased to $161,541.

Mark Fitzgerald, the solicitor for the school district, answered the community member’s question.

“It is due to the fact that the contracts are different,” he said.

Fitzgerald explained that Howard’s contract states that as long as she meets “certain performance standards,” then “her increase is guaranteed within the contract.”

“Therefore, the board does not need to take any further action on it. It is already been approved effectively through that contract that was approved in September of 2021,” he said.

A 4% raise this month would place Howard’s new salary at $168,002. It was not clear if she had met the performance standards and would receive the raise.

Sue Kresge, president of the school board, said, “Everything is on our website under the Human Resource tab. Our collective bargaining agreements and all of the contracts that we have with individuals, superintendent, our assistant superintendent, our business manager, our director of HR. They are all there for the public to review. We’re not hiding anything, so there’s true transparency.

“I just want to say that we are the only school district in Monroe County that does that. I’ve looked at all of the other three websites and none of them have any contracts on them, so we are fully transparent in that respect.”