Schools Superintendent Receives $21,000 Merit Bonus

The Board of Education July 16 approved a nearly $21,000 merit bonus payment for schools Superintendent John Ravally.

The bonus is part of Ravally’s salary package; Ravally is in the third year of a five-year contract which carries a base salary of $191,000, up to $196,584 when stipends are included. The salary increases 2 percent in each of years four and five.

In total, Ravally received $20,955.86 in merit bonuses as a result of his having met nearly every one of the goals set for him last year by the school board.

Last year, Ravally met all of his goals and earned $29,467.95 in the bonuses.

The one goal Ravally did not meet was to have reduced by at least 5 percent, and as much as 15 percent, the number of students who fail courses due to lack of attendance. This year, that number was reduced by only 2.5 percent.

Ravally stood to earn a merit bonus of as much as 3.33 percent of his compensation, or $6,546.25, had he fully met his goal.

Ravally said he was not sure why the goal to reduce “seat time” failures was not met.

“We were suspicious that that had a lot to do with class cutting, so we made a very concentrated effort … we had a decent percentage decrease in class cuts, which we attributed some of this seat time issue to, but evidently was not the issue,” he said.

“We’re going to have to re-look at it,” he said. “Students met the minimum requirements, many of them, but missed for attendance reasons. In high school, it’s period attendance. If you miss period 1 40 times, you could lose credit in period 1, but you may gain credit your other courses. If you’re absent the whole day, and you’re gone for 40 or 50 days, you could lose credit for all courses.”

“In essence, depending on the way the course is structured, you could meet the minimum requirements, but because you failed to meet the seat time requirements, based on the policy, you don’t pass the course,” he said.

Ravally said the district put an emphasis on reducing “seat time failures in the 12th Grade, but may have neglected the 9th, 10th and 11th Grades.

“We had almost 300 kids failing for seat time reasons, we have to fix that,” he said. “We thought we had a handle on it, but apparently we didn’t. It’s back to the drawing board for us.”

Ravally did meet the other four goals set for him:

• Ravally earned a $6,546.25 merit bonus for increasing by 20 percent the average number of African American and Latino students in advanced placement courses for the 2019-2020 school year.
• He earned a $4,580.41 merit bonus for increasing by 5 percent the number of 5th and 6th graders who increased grade-level proficiency as measured by the iREADY English Language Arts program.
• He earned a $4,914.60 merit bonus by developing with staff a survey to track the post-high school success of Franklin High School graduates.
• Ravally earned a $4,914.60 merit bonus be creating with staff a Franklin Educational Foundation.
  
  

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