School board pay

Few elected jobs are as thankless as serving on a local school board. Decisions on curriculum, zoning, scheduling and other education-related issues are often controversial and can stir up a hornet’s nest of angry and vocal parents.

For all the headaches, Clark County School Board members can earn a whopping $500 a month for their trouble — under current law they make between $80 and $85 a meeting, with a maximum of six meetings a month. But a new law passed in Carson City last session ups the pay to $750 a month starting in 2009.

The raise will go into effect immediately, however, if the School Board votes to approve it.

On Thursday, board members contemplated implementing the pay hike. But with only five of the seven members present, they decided to postpone the matter until a later date when every trustee is in attendance.

Fine.

The pay raise is not exorbitant and probably is well-deserved. While at least one School Board member said she opposed the hike because it is a “nickel and dime” raise at a time when “teachers are getting nickeled and dimed,” that’s political bluster. There’s no connection — barely even a symbolic one — between teacher pay and the extremely modest compensation that taxpayers provide School Board members.

If the board does eventually decide to implement the pay hike before 2009, though, it should do so with one caveat: No board member will be eligible to collect the higher salary until he or she has faced the voters in the interim.

Those currently serving took the job knowing full well what they would earn. Let the electorate be the ultimate arbiters of whether they’re worth the extra money.