School Board approves bonus for Superintendent

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough School District School Board voted unanimously to approve a $20,000 performance incentive adjustment to MSBSD Superintendent Dr. Randy Trani on Wednesday. One member of the public spoke on the action item, saying she felt the money could be better spent elsewhere.

“The city of Anchorage gave their superintendent a $15,000 bonus and publicized it for keeping their schools closed. Our superintendent kept our schools open,”said Member Tom Bergey. “This needs to be publicized to the state that we are not rewarding an individual for closing our schools, we are rewarding an individual for keeping our schools open and the rest of the state needs to know that we are keeping our schools open. The rest of the state is masking up, we are not.”

A non-action item was briefly considered by the School Board reviewing the superintendent contract through June 30, 2024. The contract is for $213,150 and will appear at later meetings of the school board. School Board Member Jim Hart said that other superintendents across the west coast are paid upwards of $300,000. Hart said that the bonus was previously suspended pay designated for a performance bonus.

“Because of covid we couldn’t really hold him to some of the performance measures we would’ve liked to because it was too much of a variable to be honest, it was quite a feat to tackle. The only goal we really gave him was please keep schools open, that was it. We want the kids in school,” said hart. “Certainly last year he was worth it and I think most of the public would agree.”