State Audit: $400K Central Bucks Superintendent Buyout 'Excessive'

State officials say a termination settlement offered by Central Bucks School District to a former superintendent two years ago was “overly generous” and “excessive,” according to a new audit of the district.

In 2013, the district broke its four-year contract with Rodney Green, who had been superintendent less than a year. As part of the terms of the separation agreement, Green left the district with $365,000, a year of health insurance, a $10,000 retirement contribution and $1,300 worth of electronics.

In the audit, released Thursday, Auditor General Eugene DePasquale offers a series of recommendations to the Central Bucks School District going forward.

As a result of the audit, officials recommend that Central Bucks School District do the following:

• Ensure that future employment contracts with prospective administrators contain adequate termination provisions sufficient to protect the interests of the district and its taxpayers in the event that the employment ends prematurely for any reason.
• Re-evaluate the effectiveness of hiring an outside firm during the superintendent search process before spending money on such services in the future.
• Provide as much information as possible to the taxpayers of the district explaining the reasons for entering into separation agreements and justifying the district’s expenditure of public funds for this purpose.
• Require the board to include in its superintendent employment contracts provisions that address the need to comply with the recent changes to the Public School Code when entering into separation agreements.

District officials say that the termination agreement was proper and necessary to protect the interest of the school district, the audit revealed.

The board told auditors that the termination agreement was negotiated because the former superintendent and the board were “drifting apart.” However, the board did not offer to discuss a corrective action plan with the former superintendent as an alternative to termination, the audit says.

DePasquale said the separation agreement was signed just a few months before changes to the Public School Code went into effect preventing such excessive buyouts.

“Less than two months after the contract was signed, a new state law would have prohibited the exact excessive buyout that Bucks County offered,” DePasquale said. “That is money that could have been better used to educate students.”

Had the district signed the employment contract after the changes to the Public School Code went into effect, the district would only have been obligated to pay the former superintendent one year’s compensation, DePasquale said.

Green was making $225,000 a year when he left.

“The district also paid $23,900 to a headhunter to find the former superintendent, which, considering the former superintendent’s brief tenure, calls into question the value of the search firm price tag,” DePasquale said. “It is a board function to search for and to hire administrators, and moving forward, I encourage this district – and other districts — to perform the work themselves rather than hiring high-cost headhunters.”

According to the audit, by breaking the contract, the separation agreement required the district to make payments to the former superintendent totaling $390,728, including:

• $365,000 for salary and benefits of, based on a calculation of $1,000 per day for 365 days
• $13,861 for actual costs for major medical, hospitalization, surgical, prescription drug, and dental coverage for one year, or until July 31, 2014
• $567 for life insurance coverage for one year ending July 31, 2014;
• $10,000 for a 403(b) retirement contribution
• A cellphone, an iPad, and a printer, all valued at $1,300.

The Central Bucks School District audit report is available by clicking here.