by Garth Meyer
Since 2005, Redondo Beach Unified School District board members have been receiving a stipend of $250 per month, even though the Redondo Beach City Charter states that boardmembers will serve “without compensation.”
Measure SD would remove the prohibition against compensation from the city charter and allow the board, if it chooses, to vote in a $250/month stipend, the maximum allowed under The California State Education Code for school districts of its size.
The clause in the city charter which designates that the school board receive no compensation goes back to 1949.
“A quarter of a million dollars has been siphoned off to boardmembers,” School Boardmember Rolf Strutzenberg said at the May 14 meeting, referring to payments made since 2005.
“This wasn’t done to siphon off funds. I don’t believe there was ill intent,” Board President Raymur Flinn said then. “Since 2005, it’s been a transparent policy whether, it was correct or not.”
Strutzenberg is also a member of the city’s charter review committee, which has combed through the charter to update it for the first time since 1992. Last October, he noticed the clause about board member compensation.
The board subsequently suspended the monthly payments.
At the May 14 meeting, the board voted to remove the stipend payments from its bylaws.
The vote also called for the school district’s attorney to draft a letter to the city, requesting the question be put to voters whether or not to delete “without compensation” from the charter.
“I’d like to get this cloud off our back,” said Boardmember Dan Elder in May. “Just getting the language out so I don’t have to worry about lawyers and just focus on kids… We’re used to being unpaid volunteers.”
Expense reports, Elder said, are vague about what is allowed to be reimbursed. Strutzenberg told Easy Reader he’s been tracking his own expenditures as a board member, and it averages $15 per month.
“We weren’t spending close to $250 per month and we were getting paid that,” he said. “It’s just wrong. Is this how we are going to lead? To teach our kids if you can get away with it, go ahead?”
Strutzenberg said he is not opposed to payment to school board members, but if reinstated, it should not be for current board members.
The board refrained from taking out a part in their bylaws about expenditures for health & welfare. The district offers to pay boardmembers’ health insurance, with each making an accompanying contribution.
Health and welfare payments should also be considered “compensation,” Strutzenberg said.
“That’s not been decided,” Flinn said. “We can debate it or not debate it, or we can take the (phrase out of the city charter),” she said. “That would cover it.”
“The $250 was always meant as a sort of expense reimbursement, for mileage, etc.,” she said. “I could probably produce that much in expenses to match that, easily.”
Flinn added that the stipend also made for less work for the district processing expense reports.
“For the school board, an eight–year member, that’s $24,000 each,” Strutzenberg said. “I got paid illegally. I don’t want anything to do with that.”
He refunded the money the district has paid him. ER
