Douglas County’s Board of Training voted Tuesday to pay Erin Kane $250,000 to guide the divided college district, bringing it one step nearer to having a brand new superintendent. Now, they only have to attend to see if she’s going to settle for the supply.
A cut up board picked Kane as Douglas County Faculty District’s superintendent final week after a roughly month-long search to fill the job, which was left vacant after administrators fired former superintendent Corey Sensible in February. Kane, who led as interim superintendent of the district from 2016 to 2018, was one among two finalists for the place.
Kane is not going to turn out to be superintendent till she accepts the contract, which board members amended barely throughout Tuesday’s assembly to have her time period finish a yr sooner than initially proposed.
Director Elizabeth Hanson proposed having the contract time period finish in June 2025, saying she felt that “financially, it’s within the district’s finest curiosity to maneuver ahead with a three-year time period.”
Administrators accepted the amended contract in a 5-1 vote. One board member, David Ray, was absent from the assembly.
The college board has been divided because it flipped to the correct following final yr’s election as 4 new conservative members gained the bulk. They and the three incumbent members have clashed over the path of the district, particularly over the firing of Sensible and their seek for his alternative.
The board voted 4 to three to rent Kane, with the three minority members favoring the opposite finalist: Danny Winsor, the district’s govt director of faculties for the Parker area.
At $250,000 a yr, the wage being provided to Kane is barely increased than the $247,500 Sensible earned. It’s lower than the $260,000 Alex Marrero receives as superintendent of Denver Public Faculties, the state’s largest college district.
If the varsity board decides to terminate Kane’s contract earlier than it expires and with out trigger, then the district pays her any remaining wage due however not more than $250,000, in line with the proposed contract.
Sensible’s contract stipulated that if fired with out trigger he can be paid any wage due in the course of the the rest of his contract, nevertheless it additionally couldn’t exceed his annual wage. He was fired two years earlier than his contract expired.
Ray issued an announcement within the morning, saying that he wouldn’t attend the assembly to vote on Kane’s contract.
“Talking as one director, I consider this assembly is the fruits of a sequence of unethical and unacceptable practices,” Ray stated. “These embody the wrongful termination of the previous superintendent, a deeply flawed choice course of, and choices/discussions that have been made outdoors of the general public eye.”
The three minority members — Ray, Meek and Hanson — have alleged their colleagues violated Colorado’s open assembly legislation main as much as Sensible’s termination. The board now faces a lawsuit, filed by a Highlands Ranch resident, that alleges they held a sequence of one-on-one conferences to bypass the legislation. Colorado statute states that if no less than three college board members talk about public enterprise, the assembly should be made public.
The board’s superintendent search additionally raised eyebrows for the way brief it took; usually college districts spend a number of months trying to find a brand new chief. And the hiring of Kane has drawn scrutiny due to her connections to sure board members. Board president Mike Peterson requested Kane to use for the job earlier than the opening was posted and Christy Williams, vp of the board, has stated her kids attend Kane’s faculties.
Kane is the chief director of faculties for American Academy, a constitution college within the district.
Since being provided the job, Kane has stated she hopes to convey collectively the divided district — and that features its college board. “I plan to work as carefully as I can with all seven board members to assist them know they’ll belief me and I hope to assist them begin to construct belief with one another,” she advised The Submit final week.
