As your elected school board, we are concerned about the recent repetition of
misinformation and misstatements of fact regarding school district budgeting and operations. We want to give you the facts on two frequently repeated, but inaccurate statements.

Superintendent’s salary.” The school board’s most important job is to hire an excellent superintendent, and we take this responsibility very seriously. In 2012, the school board launched a national search for a new superintendent and selected Susan Enfield as the best person to lead our schools. We chose a leader who is highly respected in her field and recognized as an outstanding education leader on regional, statewide, and national levels. We made the right choice for Highline, and we remain as supportive of Dr. Enfield today as when we hired
her.

Superintendent Enfield was hired at a salary of $220,000 per year. Dr. Enfield did not receive a raise at the end of the first or second years of her contact. This year, when her contract was extended to 2017, she was paid $5,000 for extra days worked, and she received a $3,600 annual stipend due to her doctoral degree, a benefit afforded to all administrators with doctoral degrees. This salary is in line with other school districts in the Puget Sound region. I want to state for the record that the school board has never considered nor approved a $75,000
pay raise for Dr. Enfield. Last year, a reporting error resulted in a much-inflated salary figure appearing on a document posted on a state website. This led to a news story naming Dr. Enfield as the top-paid superintendent in the state—a story that was inaccurate and has since been corrected by the news organization that reported it. District communications.' The school district’s communications budget, identified by state reporting codes as “Public Relations,” funds a comprehensive effort to engage and inform families and community members about our schools. This budget pays for the district’s website, community meetings, emergency notification system (Robocall, text, and email),
informational materials for students and parents (and translation into the many languages spoken in our district), online tools for parents and students, and annual and quarterly reports mailed to all households in the district, an important tool for holding the district accountable to the public. In the 2014 budget year, this budget received a 13 percent increase to pay for new
communication tools, including the mobile app, which helps parents access school and student information quickly and easily, and a much-improved emergency notification system with text and email capability. There is no automatic annual increase to this budget. In some years it may be increased to pay for communication improvements; in some years it has significantly decreased.
We understand that voters and taxpayers have questions about how public dollars are spent. The school board strives for transparency, and we welcome the opportunity to answer questions about how our schools are funded. We invite all those with questions and concerns to attend our Town Hall meeting or participate in our Telephone Town Hall. Here are the details:
Town Hall Meeting — Thursday, January, 22, 6:00 p.m., Highline High School
Telephone Town Hall - Tuesday, January 27, 7:00 p.m. (All residential phone numbers will be called, and you will be invited to stay on the line to participate.) We thank you for the opportunity to answer your questions and set the record straight.

Bernie Dorsey, President Highline School Board