Sac City Unified School Superintendent Under Fire For Pay Raise

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — As Sacramento City Unified rolls out online learning, the school district superintendent is under fire from the Teachers Association.

In a heartfelt message on Sunday, Superintendent Jorge A. Aguilar addressed the unprecedented challenges his district is facing. Meanwhile, he's facing some challenges of his own.

A petition is calling for Aguilar to resign along with an overhaul of district executives and the school board.

The struggling Sacramento City Unified School District has been running at a deficit since Aguilar took over in 2017. The district had a surplus before that.

The school board passed a resolution last year stating that the superintendent would forego his 3.5 percent annual salary increase – until the district's budget was no longer negative.

"Well, the budget was certified as negative again and then he received his raise," said David Fisher, president of the Sacramento City Teachers Association.

The Teachers Association says the board never publicly announced that it would be reneging its resolution, even though the district's budgets remained negative in every period since the resolution had been announced.

When the board extended his contract in January, the district says they retroactively increased the superintendent's base salary to make up for two of the annual pay raises he had passed up.

His salary increased from $295,000, which was his starting salary in 2017, to $316,011 in 2020.

In all, with benefits, the district says his benefit package totals $414,848.

"This is what we thought was their own resolution to hold themselves accountable," Fisher said.

The district declined an interview, but in an email said:

"Upon the extension of his contract, the Superintendent elected to end the deferral of his salary increase that he had deferred for nearly two years."

"The resolution did not and could not alter the terms of the existing employment agreement," the district added in a later email.

In essence, the district argues that the superintendent is entitled to his contracted salary, resolution or not. Continuing to defer his pay increases, and honoring the resolution, would be the superintendent's choice.

Though, on background, the district said that Aguilar is not taking back pay for the years he deferred. They say he is simply increasing his salary moving forward to include two of the three 3.5 percent annual pay increases he could have taken over the past three years.