Contact: Mike Myslinski at 650-552-5324
HAYWARD – Citing his “failed leadership” and a divisive labor record that includes last month’s 10-day strike and 83 teacher grievances filed on his watch so far, Hayward educators have voted “no confidence” in Superintendent Dale Vigil and are demanding the school board not renew his contract when it expires next year.
Vigil’s three-year contract runs from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2008. He has hurt relations between the Hayward Unified School District and the community, forced the costly arbitration of many teacher grievances he should be settling, plunged morale to “an all-time low,” and squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars of district cash on outside consultants and management attorneys.
Those are among the charges in a resolution passed unanimously Monday by the Faculty Representative Assembly of the nearly 1,300-member Hayward Education Association (HEA), the teachers’ union. The assembly speaks for all teachers in the 20,000-student district.
“It’s bad enough that his actions and inactions helped cause and prolong the strike,” said Kathleen Crummey, president of HEA. “He is still not interested in good labor relations, and that means continued low morale and the chance that students will suffer as more teachers leave our district. It’s clear there can be no healing in our district with Dale Vigil at the top.”
Vigil’s salary is $229,500, which is more than what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi makes, Hayward teachers reminded the media during the strike. He helped spark the strike with his support of giving raises of 16.84 percent last summer to Assistant Superintendent for Business Barry Schimmel and Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Cheryl Petermann, and a 13.6 percent raise for Associate Superintendent Christine Quinn. Their salaries now range from $173,451 to $181,451 and are higher than the salaries of many Bay Area superintendents.
It took the upheaval of the strike for teachers to win 11 percent in raises over two years.