Months after finishing a national search for a new superintendent following a mutual separation with the district’s former top official, Sycamore school board members added four new administrative positions with yearly salaries worth a total of $501,500.

Two of those positions, a chief academic officer and a chief operating officer, will be the first of their kind at Sycamore Community School District 427.

In a text message, Sycamore School Board President Michael DeVito told Shaw Local, “The district has the financial ability to pay for the salaries of the people we hire.”

DeVito also mentioned the existence of contingency funding.

“We carry over $13,000,000 in reserves for a rainy day as a contingency and have a recurring board goal to affirm that,” DeVito wrote.

DeVito said the district considers its approximately $14 million reserve fund fully available for operating use.

Sycamore Superintendent Kristen Campbell proposed restructuring the district’s organizational chart and creating four new administrative positions during a May 12 special Sycamore school board meeting.

No action was taken on Campbell’s proposal at the May 12 meeting, documents show. Two days after the special meeting – which, unlike normal school board meetings, is not recorded by video or audio devices – DeVito confirmed that no action had been taken on the matter.

However, less than a month later, the school board voted to approve a contract associated with the reorganization. DeVito said on Friday that the board doesn’t have to formally approve the changes Campbell proposed because district policy dictates that the superintendent sets the organizational structure.

“The fact that we ask our superintendent to report out on it publicly is a preference of our board, ironically out of a desire for transparency,” DeVito wrote.

Instead of having the power to create the organizational structure of the district, the school board decides whether they’ll hire someone for a suggested role. That’s what the board did on June 9, when members voted to hire Jeremy Bell, a former colleague of Campbell’s from Oswego School District 308, to be Sycamore’s first chief operating officer.

“Keep in mind, nothing is final until the vote happens publicly and so interviews, alternative job offers, compensation, terms of the contract are all negotiable levers admin have domicile over leading up to a vote,” DeVito wrote. “Illinois gives schools and governments personnel exemptions to not cost taxpayers legal consequence and weakened negotiating hands with private parties.”

Documents show that the district agreed on June 9 to pay Jeremy Bell $187,500 to be the district’s COO for the 2026-2027 school year. That salary could increase by an unspecified percentage for the following school year, contingent on the school board before March 1, 2027.

The school board also approved the hiring of Maurice Davis as the district’s first chief academic officer on June 16. Documents show that he’s expected to make $157,000 for the 2026-2027 school year, with a potential for a raise similar to Bell’s. Records show that applications for the new administrative positions were posted online by at least May 13.

“These new positions will benefit students, deliver exemplary schools, and fit within a balanced budget,” DeVito wrote on Friday.

Bell and Davis’ annual contracts combine for $344,500. Their jobs aren’t the only new expenditures for the district associated with organizational restructuring. In May, Campbell proposed creating a new assistant principal job at West and North Grove elementary schools. On June 16, contracts for those jobs were approved by the school board.

Marc Gorecki is expected to begin working as the assistant principal at North Grove Elementary School on July 1, with an annual salary of $82,000. Calla Stroh, hired as the assistant principal at West Elementary School, is expected to make $75,000 for the same contract year.

Campbell’s restructuring also changed the names of two administrative positions. The district was already paying salaries for those positions before the changes, however.

The combined cost of the four new positions created in the restructuring is $501,500. Campbell’s contract, which extends from March 1 to June 30, 2029, has her earning a salary of $225,000 in her first year as superintendent.

The Sycamore school district’s organization structure in recent years has had Nicholas Reineck, assistant superintendent for human resources and educational programs, and Nicole Stuckert, assistant superintendent for business services, as the next staff in the chain of command that flows down from the superintendent.

Starting July 1, they’ll report to Jeremy Bell, the district’s new COO, according to district documents.

When asked how the district will pay for the new employees, DeVito pointed to a recent change in the district’s healthcare plan as a potential way of covering the costs. However, he said it would be an oversimplification to say that alone was balancing the budget.

He also said he hopes the district is hoping to “insource” HVAC repair jobs after the district spent close to $1 million on those repairs in the last budget.

“Over the past several years the district has left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table from a lack of policy driven systems,” wrote DeVito, who’s been the board president since mid-2024.