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The Pleasanton Unified School District Board of Trustees showed early support last week in asking Interim Superintendent Maurice Ghysels to come out of retirement at a future board meeting in order for him to continue serving in the position while the district finds a permanent superintendent.
Ghysels has a financial cap of how much money he can make in district employment as a retiree, which means given his current pay rate in his contract as interim he would have to leave his position in PUSD by no later than Oct. 1 if he doesn’t want to lose his pension benefits.
If he does come out of retirement, he will be able to keep his interim position for however long it takes the district to find a permanent superintendent — he will be able to retire once again and receive his pension benefits once the superintendent vacancy is filled.
“He is retired, which means he has a very limited amount of days that he can work for us,” Board President Mary Jo Carreon said during the Aug. 22 meeting. “We as a board need to discuss asking Maurice to come out of retirement. If we do that, then we need to offer him a contract.”
Carreon said the other two options would have been hiring a new interim superintendent who isn’t a retiree or hiring a permanent superintendent, all of which would have had to happen within the next 45 days.
Even though the board majority agreed that they would like to move forward with Ghysels and ask him to come out of retirement, the board did not make any final decisions at the meeting because several trustees said they wanted to look at how a new contract with Ghysels would affect the district’s budget.Â
In that new contract they have to address whether or not to pay Ghysels the same salary as former superintendent David Haglund and if they want him to work full time or part time.
“I know there is no contract for tonight but if we’re being asked to make a decision, clearly the cost of expenditures when we’re dealing with a deficit — we have to discuss that,” Trustee Kelly Mokashi said. “It’s kind of difficult to make a decision without understanding the fiscal impact.”
She said it seemed a bit “backwards” that the district is bringing this up now rather than when the board first decided to hire Ghysels.
It’s been just under two months since Ghysels first took the reins on July 1, following the news of Haglund leaving the district in order to move back to Southern California so he could be with family.Â
Ghysels has since been vocal about his goals as interim superintendent: work with the district and the community to address upcoming budget reductions, establishing a more positive culture with all PUSD stakeholders and ensuring a successful transition to the permanent superintendent.
But in order to do all of that, he would have to remain as the interim superintendent, which won’t be official until the board returns for a final vote.
Thomas Manniello, an attorney with the Lozano Smith law firm based in Walnut Creek, explained how retirees like Ghysels are limited by the amount of money they can earn because of their California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) pensions.
According to the California Education Code, Ghysels has to be paid no more or no less than what an employee would get in his position, which is why his employment agreement states that he is making a base salary of $1,500 every day and will not exceed $74,733.
But because of that, Ghysels said he expects to meet his CalSTRS cap by the end of September, meaning that if he doesn’t get started on submitting his papers to come out of retirement soon, he will lose his pension benefits.
Manniello said it takes about a month to get Ghysels’ paperwork to come out of retirement processed and once that happens, he can work without any limitations until the end of the school year — or however long it takes to find a permanent replacement. After the new superintendent takes over, he will be able to retire once again and continue to receive his pension benefits.
But as Carreon stated, if they ask him to come out of retirement in order to keep his interim position, they will need to offer him a new contract. And as Ghysels said, he has been vocal about how he would want to be paid the same rate as Haglund.
“When I come out (of retirement), it has to be full time and it has to be at the rate of the previous superintendent,” Ghysels said. “That is what it would take.”
He said it is a full-time job and he has already been working about three and a half to four days each week — even though his current contract states he is to work three days — and that while he is not complaining about the work, if he does come out of retirement he will be losing his pension, which is why he is asking for the full-time contract.
Apart from Mokashi, trustees Laurie Walker and Steve Maher also said they were worried about the financial impact a full time contract with Ghysels would have on the budget, which is why staff will be returning with more information on how much money the district set aside for the superintendent position in this year’s budget.
With that information, the board believed it would be able to make a better decision on whether or not to move forward with Ghysels — more specifically if the district has the money set aside to do so.
“I just want to make sure that whatever decision we’re doing, it’s sound and it’s going to be fiscally (responsible),” Mokashi said. “We are in a major deficit right now.”
Association of Pleasanton Teachers president Evan Branning also asked for the board to push the decision on how to move forward to the Sept. 12 meeting because he did not like how Ghysels told the board what he would like to get paid and said the district needs to have further discussions on what his new contract would look like.
Despite questions about how the new contract would fit within the budget, the entire board said they have been more than happy with Ghysels work over the past couple of weeks and would like to continue having him at PUSD. One main reason they also wanted to keep him is if the board were to search for a new interim superintendent, or even a permanent one, it would interfere with the current search process for the new district leader.
PUSD has been working with a search firm since July in order to begin the first phase of the community engagement process that will help determine what kind of qualities they would like to see in the new superintendent.
The district is currently asking folks to respond to a survey posted on its website by Sept. 12. Additionally, there are four community forums scheduled between next Wednesday (Sept. 4) and Sept. 17 where people can offer their input. For the full schedule or to take the survey, visit www.pleasantonusd.net.
But if the search firm has to switch gears in the case that the board decides not to ask Ghysels to come out of retirement, that work will have to be put on pause in order to find a replacement interim superintendent — or it would be compressed in order to find a permanent one in less than two months.
That’s why Board Vice President Justin Brown said even though he agrees with getting more information on the financial impact a new contract with Ghysels would have on the district, he would still like to move forward with the interim superintendent in order to have stability.
“It’s still my opinion that continuity with the current interim superintendent is the best course,” Brown said. “(But) we need more data.”
