Dist. 57 board sets superintendent's salary

The Mount Prospect Elementary District 57 school board will pay its newest superintendent, Elaine Aumiller, more than $160,000 a year.

Aumiller, who starts July 1, will replace Bruce Brown, who is retiring after seven years with District 57.

The district's original choice, Peggy Kaufmann, resigned last month before taking office, after details surfaced of a DUI arrest she had on April 11 in Bartlett, and a 2002 DUI charge she pleaded guilty to.

Aumiller, an assistant superintendent at Northbrook-Glenview Elementary District 30, had been a finalist in that search, and the school board moved quickly to hire her.

Board President Joseph Leane said the District 57 board unanimously approved Aumiller's three-year contract June 4. The contract calls for her to earn $163,500 annually, he said.

That figure is within $10,000 of what the board was going to pay Kaufmann, Leane said, although he would not say which was higher.

Aumiller's contract has no automatic or built-in raises, Leane said, but she will be reviewed annually by the school board and could be given raises then.

Two background checks, one preliminary and one more detailed, have been done and Aumiller checks out "clean," Leane said.

With Kaufmann, the school board did not specifically request a criminal-background check but expected its search firm would do one as a matter of course.

Before joining District 30, Aumiller was an associate principal at Thomas Middle School in Arlington Heights. She's been an assistant superintendent at District 30 since 2005.