School Board Consolidates Coordinator Positions to Attract and Retain Employees

The Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) Board of Education voted 6-1 to approve the proposal to consolidate all three coordinator classification at the district.

Currently, there are coordinators I, II and III positions at PUSD.

Sarah Rudchenko, Interim Chief of Human Resources said after months of studying the job descriptions and job duties of Coordinators I, II and III positions, they have discovered that there is no distinguishing characteristics between the job duties.

They also found out it is difficult to recruit due to the low salaries of the Coordinators I and II positions and the pay is not in alignment with the job duties, competing priorities, deadlines, compliance, and legal obligations for the positions.

“In doing the study we determined that there is really no rhyme and reason to why people were I’s and II’s and it was more about how much money that department had,” said Rudchenko.

“At that time, they would say ‘hey I don’t have enough money so I’ll have a Coordinator I and if they have more money they could say I’ll have a Coordinator III’.”

Currently there are a total of 19 Coordinators at PUSD. There are four Coordinator I, 11 Coordinator II and four Coordinator III. 

The average salary of Coordinators I and II is at $123,000. 

The average salary of Coordinators III is at $134,846. 

“We’d like the Board to consider moving all of our coordinators to one category. We feel that would really help with our recruitment and also retention of some of our fabulous people that are working really hard in their departments,” said Rudchenko.

It was Board member Kimberly Kenne who voted in the negative on the proposal to eliminate other categories. 

“It did sound like there were very different types of jobs. I think it’s interesting to have one job title that fits all of them,” said Board member Kimberly Kenne. “I’m a little worried that we haven’t really gotten to the full bottom of what our issues are on our salary schedule and I think we really need to help clarify what our lateral moves are.”

She added that moving from one position to another without a raise does not look like a career path.

Some Board members also expressed reservations on the proposal. 

“To take a pay cut when you’re getting a promotion is not OK,” said Board Member Tina Fredericks. “I think that we remedy that path but then are we now eliminating career paths forward from these coordinator positions. So it sounds like there is more work to be done.”

Board President Michelle Richardson Bailey said it’s not for the Board to decide on who gets promoted. 

“We have our leadership staff here saying they want to promote a group of employees and I’m not certain that the Board should be involved with making that call or that decision on a promotion.” 

“We’ve approved the salaries and I’m of the belief that the supervisors, the managers and the folks who work with these employees know the level of work they are doing and if they believe that they deserve the promotion then we should give them the promotion,” Bailey said.