James Welsh, the district’s former superintendent, has agreed to accept $113,000 to resign from his position.
The Shoreline School Board approved the settlement at its June 5 meeting.
“It wasn’t easy to come to this agreement,” said board member David Wilson. “There was a lot of anger in the back room, but anger is expensive.”
Other options for disentangling from Welsh were more costly. For example, Welsh had the right to a hearing before an independent hearing officer.
“Every hearing is different, but these take six months to one year,” said Buzz Porter, the district’s attorney.
During the hearing process, the district would have had to pay Welsh’s full salary and benefits, at about $15,000 a month. His annual compensation package included $167,986 in salary-related costs, $7,549 in insurance benefits and $8,400 in lieu of mileage reimbursement.
The district also would have had to pay for all hearing costs and its own legal fees. If it lost, it would pay Welsh’s legal fees.
If the district had let the contract expire, it would have cost $368,000 plus tax over the next two years. Welsh had about two years left on his contract.
The $113,000 figure was reached through negotiation.
“It was subject to negotiation, but approximately six months of salary plus the legal costs of the hearing,” Porter said.
A few audience members criticized the payoff.
Jacobs and other board members said they’d rather not have settled, but felt it was the best and least expensive way.
“It’s not the most pleasant way, but it’s a decent way to extricate ourselves from the contract,” said board president Mike Jacobs.
Nancy Warfield, the officer manager at Kellogg Middle School, said she’d called the district over the years while Welsh was in charge and been lied to many times.
“By paying him off, does that let us stand up with a back bone and say we’re not going to take this any longer? No,” she said.
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