By Staff
Beaufort County Board of Education Chairman Robert Belcher’s statement this week that the minimum annual salary for the new schools superintendent, when that person is hired, could be $150,000 likely will draw some fire from people who will say that’s too much to pay an administrator for a school system that’s in a county that’s mostly rural in nature.
You get what you pay for, the old adage goes.
Belcher’s statement is probably right on target. People say they want a superintendent that’s qualified and well-equipped to do the job. If that’s what they want, they should be prepared to pay for it. If other school systems that are capable of paying a minimum annual salary of $150,000 for a superintendent are seeking that qualified person who’s well-equipped to do the job, then Beaufort County must at least put itself in the running to hire such a person.
The school board should get the best-qualified person it can afford to become the school system’s next superintendent. But can the school board afford to be, for lack of a better word, cheap when it comes to hiring someone to oversee the education the county’s children will receive in the coming years?
Some people raised a fuss when County Manager Paul Spruill was given a new contract that increased his annual salary to $135,000. A county manager of Spruill’s caliber easily commands that type of salary in today’s market because he’s proved himself more than just an average administrator.
And as Belcher noted, in a time when high-school principals are making about $100,000 a year in salary, it’s to be expected that a superintendent will make significantly more.
The school board should not go overboard when it comes to deciding the annual salary for the new superintendent. The school system does not need a Mercedes-Benz when it comes to the new superintendent, but neither does it need a clunker that will need to be traded in a year or two.
If the county wants to do the best it can when it comes to providing its children with a sound education, that’s going to take a quality superintendent. Quality does not come cheap.
It’s a free-market economy out there, and top-grade superintendents don’t come cheap.
The school board is not buying a piece of equipment. It’s making an investment in the education of the county’s children.
The county cannot afford to scrimp on that investment.