When it comes to big business in southeast Saskatchewan, it’s not always about oil wells and coal mines.
Elementary and secondary educational pursuits are a $109 million annual investment, just on the public education side.
The South East Cornerstone Public School Division operates 38 physical school facilities, a fleet of about 120 school buses that are maintained and dispatched from central garages and maintenance shops, employs about 550 teachers and about 1,200 people in total while headquartered in a sprawling former oil company complex on the eastern side of Weyburn.
One of the most cost effective governance teams in the big business world oversees the entire operation with 10-elected trustees monitoring the whole show that begins with a director of education and works its way down from there.
In its latest annual report, Cornerstone revealed the elected board cost the division a total of $345,477 and that included over $102,000 in professional development fees and certification costs to train the board members as to what their duties and responsibilities are currently and in the future.
The chairman or chairwoman usually ends up on the top end of the trustee pay scale, due to the fact he or she is granted additional indemnities to recognize the extra work they are required to put in while directing the philosophical traffic around the board table and administration teams.
Last year, chairman Harold Laich claimed just over $29,000 in trustee remuneration. He collected a further $1,662 in expense money and $4,804 in travel allowances. His professional development bill came in at the highest end too, at $17,271 for a grand total of $52,935. But, as noted, less than $30,000 was actual “take-home pay” with about one-third of it being tax deductible.
This year the board will be led by chairwoman Audrey Trombley, who as a regular trustee claimed remuneration of just over $26,000 and a total of just under $37,000 when expenses, travel and professional development ($6,721) were thrown into the mix.
Pam Currie, one of two Estevan-based trustees on the board, claimed total remuneration of just under $21,800 in the last school year and made a total claim of $39,846 with professional development costs coming in at just under $15,000.
Janet Foord, the other Estevan trustee on the board made a remuneration claim of just $12,646, due mainly to the fact that her duties as president of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association and Canadian School Boards Association, meant she had to miss some working sessions in Weyburn. On a few occasions, she was able to join the group via an audio hookup. Foord’s total claim came in at just under $24,000 with professional development costs being $9,368.
Next to Laich, the trustee with the highest registered total income was trustee Carol Flynn, who represents a region on the far eastern reaches of the school division so her regular remuneration of just under $29,000 was augmented by the fact she needed to claim over $7,000 in travel costs and racking up $16,550 in professional development costs for a total of just over $54,100.
Kevin Keating who represents the nearby rural schools, was allocated $19,500 in remuneration and added just under $6,000 for professional development fees and a grand total of $30,700.
Although the division has just started to embrace some of the provincially directed Lean management efficiencies, none of the professional development fees registered in the previous year were for those particular training sessions.
Lynn Little, the division’s current director of education, said these sessions were a requirement that was established some time ago not only for new, but also for veteran trustees and they included several sessions. It was believed that all of the current trustees have now completed these required courses.
In comparison, in the 2012-13 fiscal year, the total governance bill was just over $271,000 with professional development costing just $55,313 or about one-half of this past year’s PD costs.
On the administration side, the top wage earner on the personal services side of the equation was former director of education, Marc Casavant who recorded a salary of $176,833, while Kelly Hilkewich and Little, who were senior superintendents of the school division at the time, recorded the next highest salaries of $161,000 and $159,900, respectively.
In other courses of business, Cornerstone was required to pay nearly $1.2 million for membership in the Saskatchewan School Boards Association and just under $5 million to the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, plus about $191,000 for its share of employee union membership expenses.
