Search Results for: personnel commission

At its regular meeting this evening, the TUSD School Board is expected to approve an increase in the salary for the Director of the TUSD Personnel Commission. The increase will raise the salary of the Director to $136,056. The increase is a 5% raise from last year and represents a 14.67% increase from the 2016-17 school year when the Director’s salary was $118,653. The Director is also entitled to employee benefits the value of which was not specifically enumerated in the proposed budget.

As part of the proposed budget, the secretaries and clerks that support the Director will also receive a pay increase. Their collective increase, however, is a more modest 2.3% from last year.

Terry Furey, spouse of current Mayor Pat Furey, is the current Chair of the Personnel Commission. She joined the Commission after replacing her son, Patrick Furey, Jr., who resigned after his position on the Commission had come under fire due to his role in a political scandal involving illegal campaign contributions to his father’s 2014 mayoral campaign that led to a $35,000 fine by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). Furey Jr. served as his father’s campaign manager during that election campaign.

Terry was appointed to the Commission by the California School Employees Association (CSEA) Chapter #845. At the time of her appointment, she was listed on CSEA’s website as its First Vice President. The Personnel Commission was established to ensure favoritism and nepotism are kept out of the District’s hiring practices and that employees are hired based only upon demonstrated ability and not on who they know.

The total cost for the Personnel Commission was $518,265 in 2016-17. The proposed budget increases that figure to $584,682. This increase is proposed despite unverified rumors that the District has recently been hiring personnel through a private employment agency instead of utilizing the Commission. In a recent thread on the social media site Nextdoor dated 26 April 2018, one commentator identified as Danielle Zuliani claimed that:

TUSD has been hiring these [paraeducators] through a staffing agency “ Staff Rehab” even though they have a Personnel Commission that is supposed to be doing the hiring of classified staff … The new contracted paraeducator staff were offered 35 hr/ per week plus benefits compared to TUSD employed paraeducators who cannot get that many hours, saves $ on paying benefits, towards retirement, etc…but its the same job that the TUSD employed paraeducators do.

The budget increase for the Personnel Commission comes at a time of heightened tension between the School Board and the teachers union as negotiations for a new labor contract have stalled. The initial deal provided by the School Board offered teachers a 1% raise. That proposal fell through last October when it was not ratified by the TTA membership.

Patrick Furey Jr. has resigned from the Torrance Unified School District (TUSD) Personnel Commission. The news was confirmed via an e-mail by new Deputy Superintendent Dr. Tim Stowe who released an internal memo on the subject.

Furey Jr.’s position on the Commission had come under fire due to his role in a political scandal involving illegal campaign contributions to his father’s 2014 mayoral campaign that led to a $35,000 fine by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). Furey Jr. served as his father’s campaign manager during that election campaign.

The incident resulted in Furey Jr. stepping down earlier this year from his role on the City’s Traffic Commission just prior to when the Council was to hold a vote on whether to oust him. In his resignation letter, he said that “these sad political attacks on the Mayor and my family are embarrassing our City.”  He also lamented that:

“Now the most extreme elements of our City – people who literally do nothing but complain, make vicious public attacks about people they don’t even know, and write racist and homophobic blogs – call all the shots. Now they can move on to just attacking my father and leave my family out of it.”

Furey Jr. was initially appointed to the Personnel Commission in December 2012. His father had previously served in the same role from 2006 to 2008. Furey Jr. was re-appointed to the position in December 2015 and his current term does not expire until December 2018.

The Commission was established to ensure favoritism and nepotism are kept out of the District’s hiring practices and that employees are hired based only upon demonstrated ability and not on who they know. Furey Jr. was appointed to the Commission by the California School Employees Association (CSEA) Chapter #845.  His mother, Teresa Furey, is still currently listed on CSEA’s website as its First Vice President.

CSEA has 15 days from the day the position became vacant to publicly submit a new name to fulfill the remainder of Furey Jr.’s term.

Last Monday the School Board approved an annual budget of $505,895 for the School Board Personnel Commission. The Personnel Commission has come under increased scrutiny after a recent political scandal involving the mayor and his son that ultimately led to Patrick Furey, Jr. resigning his post from the City’s Traffic Commission. Furey, Jr., however, has thus far maintained his current position on the School Board Personnel Commission as School Board members have declined to take any action on the subject.

The $505,895 budget is an increase from the $482,227 approved in the prior year with staff salary increases accounting for the bulk of the difference.  School Board member Don Lee justified the pay increases by saying, “We’ve been giving anywhere from a 3% to 4% raise to our employees over the last few years.”

The Personnel Commission meets once a month and has a four person staff that includes one Director, two Personnel Analysts, and one Personnel Specialist. Per the approved budget, the Director’s salary increased from $107,940 per year to $113,693 or approximately 5.3%.  This increase came on top of a 6.4% increase the Director received in the prior year.  The salaries for the rest of the staff increased from $176,955 to $193,550 or approximately 9.4%.  The budget also allocates $122,042 for employee benefits and $49,497 for operating expenses.

The question of whether the Personnel Commission should be terminated has previously come before the voters with Measure X in 2005.  Interestingly, that vote occurred just prior to when now Mayor Furey was appointed in 2006 to the same Personnel Commission on which his son now serves.

Proponents of the initiative to terminate the Commission argued at the time that Measure X would “return the entire $318,000 annual budget of the Personnel Commission to the General Fund for more pressing needs,” and that it would “impose cost-effective realignment of personnel services and eliminate redundancy and waste making personnel operations more efficient.”

Proponents also claimed that eliminating the Commission would not abolish hiring safeguards as the Board is “legally required to implement rules and regulations to ensure fair hiring practices” irregardless of whether the Personnel Commission exists.

Opponents of Measure X argued that the Personnel Commission “protects the taxpayer’s interests by ensuring that employees are hired based only upon demonstrated knowledge, skills, and abilities and not on who they know,” and that it was needed to “ensure qualified employees are hired and treated fairly and favoritism and nepotism are kept out.”

School Board member Mark Steffens echoed those sentiments Monday night by referring to the issue as a “red herring” and stating that the Personnel Commission was established “so a Board like this cannot get involved in political decisions on people’s jobs.”

Measure X failed by a vote of 41.64% in favor and 58.36% against.