Minister of Education David Eggen deserves two thumbs up for the reforms he has brought to school board superintendent pay in Alberta.

In short, there was a lot of fat to cut in superintendent contracts and Eggen brought out the butcher knife to remove a good portion of it. In total, the government’s changes will save an estimated $1.4 million.

Some school trustees have taken exception to Eggen’s changes, arguing that by imposing salary and other compensation rules for superintendents, the minister has taken away power from locally elected school trustees.

They’re right. He has reduced their autonomy. But many boards just couldn’t seem to handle the responsibility.

Minister Eggen’s review of superintendent contracts across Alberta found all kinds of examples of irresponsible spending.

In one division, school trustees agreed to a contract that provided their superintendent with $10,000 in postsecondary tuition for their child. Why would trustees be so wasteful with taxpayers’ money?

In another division, trustees provided their superintendent with $1,200 so that their spouse could attend events. Again, why should taxpayers have to pay for this expense? And why was the amount set so high?

In Calgary, school board trustees previously agreed to a contract that provided a year’s severance to a superintendent – even if he resigned (which he did). This is obviously a costly perk that most people don’t receive.

Thankfully, the government’s new regulations forbid severance in cases where people quit. Further, if a superintendent does receive a golden goodbye package, it will now be clawed back if the superintendent finds work at another board or with the provincial government (within a year of receiving severance).

On top of the questionable perks superintendents had been receiving, school boards were also paying huge sums in salaries. Edmonton Catholic District School Board superintendent Joan Carr was poised to receive $430,000 in salary. But after Eggen’s review, she’ll now see a contract that pays at least $87,000 less.

All told, 67 of 74 superintendents will see their salary reduced by at least 10 per cent. In fact, the way the regulation is worded, it’s quite likely that many superintendents will actually receive a pay freeze for three years.

To be clear, we’re not opposed to governments providing competitive compensation packages to employees. If governments offered their employees peanuts in terms of compensation, they may attract some nice elephants for open positions, but they’re not going to attract very good candidates.

Conversely, compensation levels shouldn’t be excessive either, and clearly that’s been the case.

Going forward, if the government is ever going to dig itself out of the massive debt hole it has been digging, it needs to go after even larger opportunities for savings in the education sector – such as the province’s high teacher salaries.

While the government claims it has frozen teachers’ salaries for two years, that’s just not true. Based on the way the government negotiated the contracts, some teachers will receive pay freezes, but the Canadian Taxpayers Federation estimates that approximately 20,000 teachers will still receive pay hikes – costing taxpayers a staggering $200 million.

In the mean time, the minister has taken a good first step to trim some of the fat in the system. For that, he deserves two thumbs up.

This column was published by the Calgary Sun on June 13