Transparency Initiative Discovers $358,540 Superintendent Salary

Liberty Leader Nancy Thorner's transparency initiative in Lake Forest School Districts 67 & 115 has led to questions about the Superintendent's salary

by Brian Costin

Taking a cue from the Illinois Policy Institute’s Local Transparency Project, Liberty Leader Nancy Thorner has been pushing for more transparency in two school districts close to her Lake Bluff home; Lake Forest School Districts, 67 & 115.

Combined the two districts have 5 Schools and 3,873 students.

Those two districts share a Superintendent, Harry Griffith, and Nancy wanted to find out how much was his compensation and was it appropriate, but she had a hard time finding out information from the districts’ websites.

She notes in a recent Illinois Review article…

“If you start at the school district websites, they are very hard to navigate; there is no transparency and information is often out of date. With the wonderful resources in our community, I wonder why we can?t easily develop a website that represents our school well. If you dig deeper on the website you will find buried way deep down information about our administrators? compensation.”

But after doing some digging and combining the financial records between the two districts she was able to figure out that Superintendent Griffith’s salary is $348,540. Which is the second highest Superintendent salary in the whole state of Illinois.

Nancy continued, “Sometimes I think our School Boards forget that our school administrators are public employees and civil servants. Why is Mr. Harry Griffith paid with such a lucrative compensation package like he is a Fortune 500 giant? Is Mr. Harry Griffith really here to serve the best interests of our community and taxpayers? I can?t understand why the District 67 and District 115 Boards of Education decided to spend our taxpayer dollars like this and I think this agreement deserves heightened public awareness.”

“As you can observe, my Lake Forest Superintendent is quite lavishly paid. This is only the beginning of my reports. As a citizen reporter, other articles will follow as I continue my transparency project into Lake Forest School Districts 67 & 115.”

We look forward to Nancy’s examination of transparency of public bodies and compensation of public officials.