It looks like another change is coming next year for top administrators at Proviso Math and Science Academy. The Proviso Township District 209 Board of Education tabled a motion Tuesday night to bump Principal Kim Waller Echols to assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the 2013-2014 school year. The board will vote on the motion in January. Echols was named principal last year.
This school year, Leslie Wilson, a retired former principal at Riverside-Brookfield High School, will replace Cheryl Pruitt as interim assistant superintendent. She works at the West 40 Regional Office of Education and runs a school-improvement consulting service. The board agreed to pay Wilson $500 per day.
So Echols will remain principal at PMSA this year. The board hesitated about hiring her for the new post a year early, said school board member Kevin McDermott. “We asked ourselves, ‘Did we really look very hard [for an asst. supt.]?’ We’re not ruling out hiring someone in the future who really stands out.” Echols is certified with a type 75 administrative certificate, but her teaching certificate was issued in 2002 to teach elementary school, not high school. The tabled contract would have paid Echols $145,000.
Meanwhile, Echols and the other top D209 administrators will receive an across-the-board pay raise of 2.5 percent. Board President Emanuel “Chris” Welch cautioned administrators, who are non-union and hired on one-year contracts, that the board would not be “granting blanket pay raises like this in the future. Next time, the raises will be based on merit.” Superintendent Nettie Collins-Hart received a 5 percent raise.
Administrator salaries approved by the board include: Supt. Collins-Hart, $218,791.13; Proviso West Principal Roudell Kirkwood, $143,500; Proviso East Asst. Principal Keisha Lang, $87,125; Ed Moyer, director of assessment/planning, $139,499.96; Sharon Palmer, director of accounting, $87,123.34; Proviso East Principal Tony Valente, $123,000; and PMSA Principal Echols, $132,225.
