Milligan designed settlement, files show

Tacoma schools chief Charlie Milligan took charge until the end.

The man some lauded for holding people accountable and others criticized as authoritarian provided the framework for his negotiated exit from the district after only a year on the job.

According to that agreement, Milligan is due a settlement amounting to $418,500 on Aug. 1. That means the district will have spent at least $656,500 on his pay, benefits and taxes.

The retirement/settlement agreement provides for an after-tax cash payment of $275,000 on Aug. 1.

A year ago, Milligan left the Fontana (Calif.) Unified School District with a “resignation/retirement” pact that included a large cash-out for leave days and retirement funds after less than two years on the job.

He and Tacoma School Board members signed the terms and conditions of their agreement Thursday night. Milligan has seven days from that time to revoke the agreement.

The deal, approved on a 3-2 vote, will cost the district around $48,000 more than if Milligan had simply been fired without cause, documents show.

But there’s much more behind it than figures on paper, board vice president Jim Dugan said Friday.

Many factors, including Milligan’s performance, went into the final decision, he explained.

“We had a discussion around many balance points. There were many moving parts,” Dugan said. “The board and the superintendent believe the final terms and conditions of the agreement are in the best interests of both parties.”

Dugan and other board members pointed out that Milligan’s contract called for only 18 months of pay and benefits if he were terminated without cause. Many superintendents contracts have three-year buyouts, Dugan and others said.

Milligan’s departure comes after months of turmoil and accusations by many employees and community members that he and some of his top administrators ruled by bullying and intimidation. Some civic leaders accused the schools chief of snubbing them and ducking their meetings.

PROPOSAL DREW FROM EXPERIENCE

Board members worked from Milligan’s own separation proposal as they negotiated the agreement, school district attorney Susan Schreurs said Friday.

President Connie Rickman took the lead for the board, with Schreurs providing legal counsel. Schreurs also consulted with Valerie Hughes of the Perkins Coie law firm.

Board members settled on the final terms during a closed-door session Thursday evening. A short time later, in public session, Rickman, Dugan and Kim Golding voted in favor of the agreement. Kurt Miller and Debbie Winskill opposed it, though both said they wanted to see Milligan leave.

“We could put this money to better use,” Winskill, the only board member who’s up for re-election this fall, said Friday. “This is a settlement that’s in his best interests, not in the best interests of the district.”

The seven-page agreement is similar in many respects to the pact Milligan negotiated with Fontana schools in April 2006 after he was hired in Tacoma.

It appears the Fontana agreement was the template for the Tacoma deal. The language in many paragraphs of the two agreements, including the “letter of retirement,” is nearly identical, and many of the Tacoma terms mirror those of Fontana.

Milligan, reached by telephone at his Northeast Tacoma home Friday, declined to comment.

HARD TO TELL WHEN THINGS CHANGED

It was just a few months ago that the superintendent was rated “satisfactory” by three of the School Board’s five members.

No one will pinpoint when the relationship shifted from a performance review to an exit strategy, but the watershed event may have been the School Board meeting June 14.

That afternoon, Milligan spent nearly two hours in an interview with The News Tribune, talking about how his changes might be uncomfortable but were working. Across Tacoma, students were mastering the basics of math and proving they’d learned the subject on district-designed tests, he said. There will be a jump in WASL scores, he predicted.

At one point, he dabbed tears from his eyes as he talked about his commitment to every student in the city.

And he addressed complaints about his style by saying, “How long do you want to wait to make it better for kids? At what point do you want me to say I shouldn’t go any harder or faster? If you keep doing the same (old) thing, you’re going to get the same results.”

Three hours later, a coalition of community groups, including the 2,100-member teachers union, the Black Collective, the Sound Alliance, Jobs With Justice, members of several neighborhood councils and others, implored the board and Milligan for better leadership.

They presented a letter asking for respectful relationships between the school district and the community, a shared vision and plan for the future, efforts to help minority students, improved relations with employees and greater accountability.

There were supporters there, too.

Bonney Lake resident Dan Decker presented a petition, saying he had the signatures of 434 Tacoma residents who supported Milligan as a man “of high moral character” who “can be trusted to do what is best for the Tacoma School District.”

Jason Lee Middle School student Keith Hicks said then that some of Milligan’s initiatives were helping kids succeed.

Two days later, the board cut short what had been scheduled as an all-day session to complete Milligan’s review and put it in writing. When they resumed their discussions June 21, the talk was about Milligan’s departure.

‘BEST THING FOR THE DISTRICT’

“I don’t remember who brought it up first,” Rickman said, referring to Milligan and the board. “We were thinking individually, and then coming to that point” of negotiating his departure, she said Saturday.

The written evaluation and appended comments, released Thursday, reveal sharp differences among board members over how well Milligan was doing the job.

Rickman and Dugan said the schools chief was giving principals the freedom and creativity to run schools at the neighborhood level, bringing in programs to boost achievement and holding employees to a higher standard.

Miller and Winskill said he’d broken faith with the community, lost the trust of employees and plunged the district into disarray.

Golding, who appeared to be the swing vote, liked a lot of the changes Milligan brought, but in the end, she said, “A superintendent of schools shouldn’t have so many people unhappy with him.”

Rickman came to the point of letting go “with a heavy heart.” But there was “no question” it was the right thing to happen, she said.

The climate in the district was no longer conducive to focusing on education, Rickman and others said.

Miller agreed. “The best thing for the district is that we severed the relationship with him,” he said.

Golding was uncomfortable with the amount of the settlement, but the situation called for closure, she said Friday.

“I feel like it was the best decision I could come up with,” she said. “We need to get our focus back on kids and keep it on kids.”

CRITIC CALLS SETTLEMENT ‘VERY TELLING’

Stan Smith, a School Board candidate and frequent critic of how the district is run, called the settlement “very telling.”

“They tried to make it seem mutual for the sake of the board members and everybody else,” he said. “If it was truly mutual that he leave, it should have been a wash, with no payout,” said Smith, one of two candidates running against Winskill.

It looks like Milligan was fired, plain and simple, he said.

Linda Sliva, a para-educator who works for the district, told School Board members Thursday night, “It’s a dark day for Tacoma kids and a dark future, I’m afraid.”

Milligan was willing to hold people accountable and had the courage to make tough decisions in a district sorely in need of change, Dugan said.

“Speaking for myself, I think he’s the right guy, with the right skills, the right talents, the right sense of urgency to aim us in the right direction,” he said.

Rickman agreed. “He did us a lot of good,” she said Saturday. People will look at the financial cost of his departure, but there’s more to the accounting, she said.

“When you see the beautiful little smiles” on the faces of kids who are getting the grasp of the basics in math for the first time, “how do you measure that?” she said.

Miller had a different perspective.

“We had an opportunity to have less money for a settlement, but it didn’t happen,” he said. “Every dollar that goes to a settlement are dollars that can’t provide for the education of our children.”

Charlie Milligan’s pay, benefits and settlements from two school districts could total about $1.17 million in less than three years. Here’s how:

Assuming the Tacoma School District pays Milligan’s separation package Aug. 1, the combination of pay, taxes, benefits and guaranteed insurance premiums will total at least $656,553 in the span of 13 months.

When added to the estimated pay, car allowance and departure settlement from the Fontana Unified School District in California, Milligan’s compensation from the two districts could total more than $1.1 million.

He worked for Tacoma from July 1, 2006, through June 30, 2007, and he’s on call but fully paid through Aug. 1.

He worked in Fontana from Nov. 15, 2004, through June 30, 2006.

Here’s a breakdown of how The News Tribune arrived at the estimated total, according to Milligan’s contracts and retirement/separation agreements.

$418,500
Payout includes salary and benefits for July; net cash settlement of $275,000; taxes; and insurance costs for one year from Tacoma Public Schools.

$238,053
Salary, insurance premiums and car allowance from Tacoma Public Schools from July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007
Total annual compensation, according to June 20, 2007, payroll information.

$292,500
Fontana Unified School District salary from Nov. 15, 2004 through June 30, 2006
Milligan's negotiated salary was $180,000 a year. Payroll records from Fontana were not immediately available, and it's unknown if his pay went up during his tenure. The $300,000 figure comes from multiplying his base $15,000-a-month salary times the 20 months he worked in Fontana.

$9,750
Car allowance from Fontana Unified School District ($500 a month for 19.5 months)

$206,868
Unused vacation/sick time and in-lieu retirement benefits negotiated in Milligan's retirement/resignation agreement from Fontana after he took the Tacoma job
Milligan's resignation/retirement agreement from Fontana called for a payment of $85,934 in unused vacation and sick time in July, 2006; a second installment payment of $85,934 in unused vacation and sick time on Jan. 15, 2007; and a payment of $35,000 on Jan. 15, 2007 in lieu of retirement benefits.

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$1,165,671

Sources: Tacoma Public Schools payroll records; retirement/settlement agreement with Tacoma Public Schools; Fontana Unified School District employment contract; resignation/retirement agreement from Fontana Unified School District; The Press Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.