Former CT schools chief offered $250K salary to serve as Penn. superintendent until 2027; school board will vote on contract

Allentown School Board is set to vote Thursday on a four-year, $250,000 contract to make acting Superintendent Carol Birks the district’s permanent leader.

If approved, Birks will be the district’s first Black woman superintendent.

The board will hold a special public meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday in the district administration building to vote on the contract, which runs through June 2027 and includes the opportunity for a base salary increase every July that cannot exceed 4%. The salary would be prorated for the remainder of this school year.

Birks has been serving as interim leader since former Superintendent John Stanford controversially left the district in October, less than a year into his five-year contract.

Birks was Allentown’s interim superintendent part time until December, when she relocated to the region. She has been paid $850 per day for her work.

Birks came to the district from Connecticut, where she was serving as regional superintendent and chief schools officer with Booker T. Washington Academy, a tuition-free charter school for kindergarten through eighth grade students in New Haven and Hamden.

In June 2020, Birks was paid $215,000 to serve as superintendent of Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, which was under receivership. She was one of the highest paid superintendents in Pennsylvania at the time, according to Forbes.

In 2018, Birks was hired to serve as superintendent of New Haven Public Schools in Connecticut at a starting salary of $235,000, according to the New Haven Independent. She was bought out of her position after a year and a half on the job.

Two Allentown School Board members have voiced concerned about the superintendent hiring process, which did not include a candidate search or community forums.

Community leaders have criticized the board for its lack of transparency in moving to vote on hiring Birks, but many still are in favor of her leading the district. A consultant advised the board to hire Birks at a recent retreat, according to the district’s solicitor, noting there’s a tight market for superintendents.

Stanford, the district’s last permanent superintendent, was hired in September 2021 and awarded a five-year contract with a $230,000 annual salary. He came to the district from Columbus, Ohio, where he was a school administrator.

Stanford, 58, was hired in an unanimous vote and began on the job in Allentown that November. His salary was prorated, and when he parted ways with the district in October, his severance pay was nine months’ worth of his annual salary.

Before Stanford took over, Thomas Parker was the district’s last permanent superintendent. He was 38 when he signed a five-year contract in 2017, at a starting salary of $175,000. He left halfway through his fourth school year for a job at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in Flint, Michigan.

The longest tenure of an Allentown superintendent in recent history is the five years served by Russ Mayo from 2011-16. If hired, Birks will be the district’s sixth superintendent since 2010.

Morning Call reporter Jenny Roberts can be reached at 484-903-1732 and jroberts@mcall.com.