Although applause met the swearing in of Superintendent Thomas Seidenberger at the Aug. 27 meeting of the East Penn School Board, tensions rose as the board debated administration pay raises in a time of controversial budget cuts.

The debate began when Lynn Donches proposed the district-wide non-bargaining pay raises pursuant to Act 93 slated for vote that evening be amended to include pay raises to only those employees earning $45,000 or less. This would eliminate Seidenberger's pay raise as well as the pay raises of more than 40 administrative employees.

Donches argued the per capita income for the region was $34,297, less than what she was proposing in her amendment for inclusion in the Act 93 compensation. Board President Charles Ballard, however, pointed out a number of surveys conducted in the district showed its median income at $75,000, and salaries in the marketplace are not determined by average income level but by what the necessary skills are for a given position.

Ballard was staunch in his defense of the pay raises. "You have to pay fair wage to people you have in your employ or you'll be known as an unfair employer.

"I find it less than candid for people to come out and try to establish a public employee's salary based on [something] other than an evaluation like you do elsewhere in business…but simply trying to limit public employees' salaries because they are employed 'by the public' is something I find to be tremendously offensive," Ballard said. He called the idea "disingenuous at best" and "blatantly trying to establish political goals rather than economic goals."

When Donches tried to offer the idea of across the board pay increases based on comparisons to other school districts and ostensibly in the interest of fairness, Ballard countered with the affirmation that the district had not "espoused a program of across the board raises," stating pay increases had always been based on merit and evaluations as a matter of board policy.

"We have a system," Ballard said, according to whom it is the job of the superintendent to evaluate district employees and those evaluations are private records of the school district and the individual, not subject to right to know requests or to the board. "The superintendent has a job and we evaluate him in that job," Ballard said. "It's not legal to discuss why someone got less and some got more."

Julian Stolz asked how "in good conscience" the board could approve a pay increase for district employees and administrative staff when $60,000 for busing to Willow Lane Elementary School had just been cut from the budget. Seidenberger immediately responded to Stolz, asking to drop the "politicking" and "talk turkey." The superintendent reminded the board of last year's pay freeze for the administrative staff which generated $1 million. "I've been in this business for a long time," Seidenberger said in closing.

Stolz further implied it may have been a personal agenda to "hide" the salary increase approval under personnel matters on the agenda that the board typically votes on in lump, to which Ballard responded by calling it "tremendously offensive to imply motive when that person has zero-zero-facts…saying some kind of motive is involved is called an ad hominem attack."

Ballard continued to defend the superintendent's position saying, "We set parameters. We gave the superintendent parameters. He has operated within those parameters."

Donches' amendment to the motion was overturned, and the board approved the salary increases by majority vote.

At the tail end of the meeting Donches brought attention to the resignation of assistant principal Janine Mathesz, effective Aug. 20, and motioned the board not replace her position. Donches argued Mathesz's workload be consolidated into those of the remaining four assistant principals, saying they would only increase by five percent. "We need to start cutting spending," Donches said, "and I think this is a good place to start."

Ballard responded by calling Donches' suggestion "a classic case of micromanagement by the board," noting a decision of such a sensitive nature should have been submitted to the board in executive session to allow time for consideration. Ballard proceeded to call the motion "political entrapment" and "micromanagement of the worst sort," also noting the district held a place in the top 10 percent of Pennsylvania districts with the lowest administrative costs.

Vice President Alan Earnshaw expressed his absolute confidence in the superintendent's proven history of analyzing vacant positions and backfilling them as needed. Regarding Donches' motion, he opinioned it "inappropriate, unprofessional and extremely disrespectful to everyone sitting around this table."

Donches' suggestion did not receive the majority vote, though Julian Stolz defended and supported her motion. Stolz, who previously in the meeting had been accused of politicking based on his personal, and previously expressed goals for a political future, ended the meeting with a personal statement: "I take my orders from no one, and I take suggestions from everyone…I try to stay true to my personal convictions."