By Patrick Adrian
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
CLAREMONT — SAU 6 Superintendent Michael Tempesta will receive a contract extension with the Claremont and Unity school districts through June 2027, pending agreement over final contract terms.
The SAU 6 School Board, a joint body composed of the Claremont and Unity school board members, approved by a unanimous vote a five-year contract extension to Tempesta on Wednesday.
Some terms and conditions of the contract are still under negotiation, but the contract states that Tempesta will receive a salary of $139,205 in 2022-2023, the first year of the contract, with annual salary increases of 3 percent in the following years.
There may also be performance-based conditions that hinge the contract’s continuation to annual employee evaluations.
The joint board hired Tempesta, a school administrator from Massachusetts, in March 2019 in a formal search to replace former superintendent Middleton McGoodwin.
Frank Sprague, Claremont School Board chair, said he supports the extension to Tempesta, who has been a good leader to date and had to weather unprecedented challenges the past two years.
“I think once we get past this pandemic that we can make some real progress,” Sprague told The Eagle Times.
Tempesta’s current contract with the supervisory union is set to expire at the end of June.
Under the SAU 6 agreement, Claremont will assume responsibility for 90.2 percent of Tempesta’s salary, equating to $125,561 next school year, and Unity will pay the remaining 9.8 percent, equating to $13,643.
SAU board approves 2022-2023 budget
In a separate action the SAU 6 board approved a proposed supervisory budget of $1,795,945.22 for fiscal year 2023. The proposal will move to a public hearing scheduled on Thursday, Jan. 20, at the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center in Claremont.
If passed, Claremont would be responsible for $1,619,942.59 of the total budget and Unity’s portion would be $176,002.63.
The proposal is an increase of $23,802 from the current fiscal year.
The increase is primarily attributable to a 3 percent hike in the mandatory contribution to the state retirement system, an increase of $27,744 next fiscal year, according to SAU 6 Finance and Operations Director Richard Seaman.
The proposal includes salary increases to three SAU positions to bring their compensation closer to their regional market value, which Seaman said was necessary to provide a fair pay or retain those employees.
These increases, according to Seaman, differ from the “merit pool pay” that has been part of the SAU budget since fiscal year 2020.
The merit pool pay is intended as a one-time bonus, of 3 percent of an employee’s salary, that is given to employees who perform above and beyond their duties.
In previous years, the SAU awarded these bonuses without a formal criteria, Stevens said. Instead, the SAU rewarded its employees for “performing at a very high level in order to stabilize what was going on in the SAU at that time.”
The SAU now intends to determine those merit pay bonuses using a formal evaluation system developed by the school board that incorporates specific criteria and feedback for accountability purposes.
The evaluation tool was reportedly developed two years ago though Tempesta and Seaman said they only learned of it this year.
The proposed budget for the merit pool pay in 2022-2023 is $36,373, which includes the cost of wages, social security taxes and Medicare and retirement obligations.
reporter @eagletimes.com
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