Awarding Themselves a 300 Percent Raise?

Media
4 hours ago
2 min read

Despite a recent volcanic eruption of citizen anger over a scuttled proposal to raise salaries for Chula Vista City Councilmembers by 70 percent, trustees for the Chula Vista Elementary School District last week voted to award themselves an even bigger raise – 300 percent.

Starting Sept. 1, monthly stipends for trustees of the 28,000-student district will increase from $750 to $3,000 under a new pay scale approved by trustees at their Aug. 12 monthly meeting.

Trustees Francisco Tamayo, Jessica Tolston and Lucy Ugarte voted for the raises. Trustees Delia Dominguez Cervantes and Keren Ramirez Dominguez voted against.

The raises, which will increase the amount the district spends on annual school board compensation to $223,000, come at a time when the district nearly had to lay off teachers earlier this year to ease a budget crunch.

Once the raises take effect, Chula Vista Elementary trustees will be among the highest paid in San Diego County, earning a third more than trustees in the much larger San Diego Unified School District.

Chula Vista Elementary trustee Francisco Tamayo just effectively gave himself a 300% raise. He is currently running against John McCann for Chula Vista Mayor | VOSD photo | Click on image to enlarge

Tamayo, who is also running for Chula Vista mayor this year, said the raises came in response to a new state law passed last year that lifted a decades-old cap on school trustee pay.

Chula Vista Elementary trustee stipends haven’t changed since 1984, Tamayo said — “[when] I was four years old.”

Tamayo pointed out that other South County districts, including the Sweetwater Union High School District and the South Bay Union School District, also recently increased trustees’ pay.

Chula Vista, Tamayo said, is in better financial shape than some of those districts. Over the past year, he pointed out, South Bay Union has moved to close schools and laid off staff in response to a multimillion-dollar budget gap.

Chula Vista was able to avoid teacher layoffs this year, Tamayo said. And the board waited until district finances improved before voting on the raises, he said.

“[Chula Vista Elementary] trustees are regularly responding to district updates, working through parent concerns, visiting school sites and engaging directly with state legislators. That workload, more than any single benchmark, is what the board weighed in choosing the statutory maximum [raise].” —Francisco Tamayo

District critics pounced anyway.

“What was the justification?” district watchdog Bertha Lopez wrote on Facebook. “What happened to public service?”

“If people don’t start paying attention, South County will become a poor community with rich elected [officials] and no community services,” wrote Nadia Ayub, also a critic of the three-member majority who voted for the raises.