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News
Attorney to review new school chief's pact : News : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisAttorney to review new school chief's pact
| Iowa School Board seeks to halt payment to new Oswego superintendent
| by Lyle R. Rolfe
| 7/12/2012
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Members of the Ankeny School District Board in Ankeny, Iowa have hired a law firm to see if the district has a legal basis not to pay $176,000 to its former superintendent, Dr. Matthew Wendt.
Wendt began his new duties as superintendent of the Oswego School District last week.
According to a story in the Des Moines Register, the Ankeny Board voted 6-0, with one person absent, to hire a law firm to determine whether it has to pay Wendt the year's salary. His first payment is due July 20.
The Ankeny Board on May 30 offered Wendt a one-year contract extension with a 3.25 percent raise or an opportunity to resign June 30, including a severance of $176,513 per his request.
The next day, Oswego School District Board members announced Wendt as their new superintendent with a salary of $225,000.
The timing of events prompted one Ankeny Board member to ask that Wendt not accept the money.
Wendt has previously denied any wrongdoing during the contract negotiations saying they were done in good faith.
According to Ankeny Board members, Wendt had two years left on his Ankeny contract and tried to negotiate a severance worth 18 months of salary on May 24-the day after he began negotiations with the Oswego School District.
Instead, the Ankeny Board agreed to a transition allowance worth one year's salary to be paid in 12 monthly payments. The president said in June that Wendt led him to believe he did not have a new position lined up.
Ankeny board members said they are waiting to see what their lawyer says.
"I don't want to speculate on what they might do. But obviously, they think they need to get a second opinion on the legal contract that their attorney wrote, and their board offered and approved. If that's the course of action they think they need to take, so-be-it," Wendt said.
Wendt said last week he was aware the board had hired an attorney and was planning to discuss the issue at a closed session scheduled for next Monday, July 16.
"I think the attorneys are going to come in and tell them it's a legal document and then I'll move on, I hope. I think it's part of routine business that they need to take care of but I'm not sure; I didn't ask them," he said.
Wendt said he does not believe he did anything wrong or illegal. He said in an earlier statement that the timing between when he resigned from Ankeny and when he accepted the Oswego position caused the problem.
He could not say what he might do until he finds out what the Ankeny board decides in its closed session.
Wendt said he's not sure who on the board may be behind this.
"I've moved forward to my next position and I'm so busy with this district (Oswego), that I really haven't been paying much attention to it," he said, referring to Ankeny.
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