A previously approved pay raise for Paso Robles Joint Unified School District (PRJUSD) Superintendent Curt Dubost sparked a heated debate among district trustees on April 25, which ended in a 3-2 vote to approve the bump.

The 10 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Dubost matched the COLAs given to district teachers, staff, and management in new contracts inked last year, according to the district.

It bumps Dubost's base salary from $202,800 to $223,080.

"[Dubost's] contract was negotiated last year, under the prior board," said district board trustee Jim Cogan, who voted to implement the raise. "I don't think it's a good idea ... to be negotiating after the fact in bad faith."

The PRJUSD typically gives equal percentage pay raises to the superintendent after settling negotiations with teacher and staff unions, according to a district staff report.

At the April 25 meeting, Cogan noted that Dubost "specifically requested" that the district delay his raise until the staff and teachers received theirs. Board President Nathan Williams emphasized that the raise is already in his contract.

"We are not approving a new COLA," Williams said. "The only reason we're discussing this now is [Dubost's] own choosing."

But two trustees—Laurene McCoy and Dorian Baker—opposed the raise and criticized how the district prepared the agenda item.

McCoy echoed criticisms lobbed during public comment about Dubost's job performance, pointing to the district's below-average standardized test scores in recent years.

"If this were a private corporation—which I know it's not—but if it were, and only one out of four products met standards, the CEO would've been fired," McCoy said. "We have to take into consideration the things that are not going right as well. That's all I have to say."

Baker lamented the lack of documentation included in the agenda item for the raise.

"It would've been good to put a copy of the contract into the board packet," she said. "Is it the policy of this new board to not present documents related to a vote?"

Williams quickly shot back: "That's obviously not the case at all. And you know that as well as I do. What I brought forward was to implement what was agreed upon before."

Baker took issue with that response.

"I would request that—and this has happened before—that I never be scolded for not asking for something in advance," she said. "Always, if I've had time to get to that part of the agenda, I would ask for it. But it's a long agenda, this is the last item on it, and I didn't get to it in time to ask for it."

McCoy jumped to Baker's defense.

"With everything else you ask us to approve, there are attachments to every single thing," she said. "So why is this the only one that doesn't have an attachment?"

Baker continued on to question the district's practice of mirroring the superintendent's pay bumps with the unions'.

"It's just not in my opinion a good look for a superintendent to have an automatic 'me too' with the bargaining units," Baker said.

Dubost stayed mostly silent during the debate except to point out that he's still making less in salary than the much-criticized former PRJUSD superintendent, Chris Williams, did in 2019.

"I'm not even where my predecessor was when he left, if I'm correct," Dubost said.

With Dubost planning to retire next year, Cogan warned that the board could jeopardize its search for a new superintendent if it failed to live up its contractual commitments to Dubost.

"For anyone who has ever had anything to do with executive recruitment, that's what they look at. They look at how their previous executive was treated," Cogan said. "It's such an incredibly terrible, terrible, irresponsible thing to send as we're going to be looking to recruit a top talent that our students and our staff deserve. It's inconceivable to come back after the fact and negotiate in bad faith."

Trustee Sondra Williams, who voted for the raise, added that Dubost shouldn't shoulder the blame for the district's struggles.

"Dubost led us through some of the most trialing times Paso Robles has ever seen," she said. "To put full responsibility [on him] during a pandemic, during times of social injustice, during a climate in our community that he could've easily walked away from, wavered from, not been steadfast in his leadership, I think it's a bad message to send." Δ