School Board approves salary increases

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

The Wythe County School Board approved across-the-board salary increases for school system personnel during its meeting Tuesday morning, but the action left some of its members saying the boost still fell short of providing ideal raises.
Public school employees generally will see a 5 percent raise in their salaries next year. The plan the School Board approved also adds an extra level at the top of the salary scales for most positions – meaning, for example, a school nurse’s last experience level pay raise will now come after his or her 12th year on the job instead of the 11th.
The School Board members approved the salary increases by a 5-2 voice vote, with Vice-Chairman Chalmer Frye and first-year member Deborah Crigger casting the dissenting votes.
Both Frye and Crigger emphasized that they voted “no” because they believed that the increases were too minor – and not because they disapproved of faculty and staff receiving raises.
The 5 percent pay increases include the salary boost encompassed by the experience level scales.
For example, under the 2007-08 scales a rookie teacher with a bachelor’s degree is paid $34,038. Bachelor’s degree-level teachers with no experience will receive $35,610 for the 2008-09 school year, a 4.6 percent increase.
The 5 percent increase comes when employees move up their salary scales, as teachers with bachelor’s degrees coming back for their second year of teaching in 2008-09 will make $35,742, or 5 percent more than the $34,038 they made as rookie teachers in 2007-08.
Certain step levels, though, will receive even more than the 5 percent increases.
Again using a teacher with a bachelor’s degree as an example, a 20-year veteran educator received $39,576 for the 2007-08 school year. The same teacher, now with 21 years of experience for 2008-09, will receive $42,066 in 2008-09 – a 6.3 percent increase and 5.3 percent more than the $39,951 the teacher would have received as a 21-year veteran if the scales hadn’t been revised for 2008-09.
But Frye and Crigger focused on the salary scales for some of the school system’s lowest-paid employees.
The minimum hourly rate for a custodian increases only 6 cents under the new scales, from $8.20 to $8.26 an hour (a 0.7 percent gain). The increase works out to an extra $123 a year.
With the step increase factored in, a custodian returning for his or her second year on the job still will receive the same 5 percent raise as teachers, in the custodian’s case from $8.20 to $8.61 an hour.
The increase amounts to an extra $852 a year, but still exactly half the $1,704 increase given to second-year teachers with bachelor’s degrees – despite each getting a 5 percent raise.
“Five percent of this is practically nothing,” Frye said referring to the wages for the school system’s lowest paying jobs. “These people are struggling.”
The real dollar amount differences accounted for by the raises get only starker as experience levels increase.
Secretaries working 260 days a year and moving from their 20th year on the job to their 21st in 2008-09 will make $1,332 more than they did in 2007-08.
In comparison, teachers with doctorate degrees and the same experience levels as the secretaries will make $2,490 more during the 2008-09 school year.
Frye said he’d like to see pay increases at least partly calculated in dollar amounts instead of percentages, for example increasing each salary step by $500 instead of factoring in 5 percent pay raises.
“I am just having severe reservations about these scales,” Frye said.
In addition to seeing better pay for the school system’s lower-paid employees, Frye also emphasized that teachers’ scales should provide more pay increases based on experience.
He compared the 2008-09 scales for maintenance workers and teachers with bachelor’s degrees in making his argument.
While not belittling the service that maintenance workers provide, Frye said it doesn’t seem right to him that a 10-year veteran maintenance worker will make $6,654 more than a novice maintenance employee when teachers in the same situation will make only $1,983 more than their inexperienced peers.
“Our teachers are on the front lines every day,” Frye said. “We still have some small steps even though everyone is getting an increase.”
School Board Chairman Walter White, who voted in favor of the new scales, said he understood Frye’s points, but told him that his concerns should have been presented months ago.
“This should have been done with work sessions on the budget instead of today,” White said.
School Board member Alan Wilder told Frye that if he wants to see the changes he’s arguing for he should create revised plans instead of just voicing his disapproval of the salary scales as they were presented.
Before passing the new salary levels, the School Board also heard yet another presentation on the construction plans for Rural Retreat High School, which have now expanded back to include some work on Rural Retreat Middle School, as well.
The scale of the project has been on a roller coaster ride since construction plans were first announced in October 2007 as the School Board and the Wythe County Board of Supervisors have tried to work out how to fund as many of the proposed additions and renovations as economically feasible.
Based on the update presented Tuesday morning by Randy Jones, an architect with OWPR, the project is now expected to cost $13.2 million and encompass essentially everything the original $13.4 million plans called for with the exception of creating a fine arts center out of an old agricultural building adjacent to the main school building.
“We’re really in a lot of ways back to the same scope we had [last fall],” Jones said.
The proposed fine arts center was expected to cost $1.4 million, but the school system will save only $200,000 from the overall project’s original cost, in part because of the increase in construction costs since the initial calculations were made about six months ago.
Part of the increase, though, results from the fact that some of the aspects of the fine arts center are being incorporated into the renovations and additions on the main school building.
For example, a new band classroom and an instrument storage area now are being added onto the ground floor of the high school’s portion of the building.
Jones said about 1 percent of the price increase on the portions of the project being addressed in the most recent plans is due solely to the bidding delay.
“We’ve sat around for months and gone round robin as prices go up and for what purpose?” Frye asked.
But Jones emphasized that projects such as asbestos abatement have still moved forward during the interim period and that the school system may still in the end recover the escalating costs of construction materials by bidding the high school and middle school portions of the project together.
Under the revised schedule, the School Board will receive bids for the project this fall with construction set to begin in October.
Jones said a contractor would not be bound by the proposed construction schedule, but he said he will recommend phasing the project for an overall completion date in December 2010.
Along with adding a band classroom to the main school building, Jones said the new plans also significantly reconfigure science classrooms and labs from the way they were initially presented last October.
The new plans call for the renovations to create two large science rooms that will share an adjoining preparation room and will each have desks for both labs and regular classroom work.
Renovations included in the original plans such as improvements to the high school’s auditorium and gymnasium and the middle school’s cafeteria and locker rooms – but cut in intermediate proposals – are also included back in the latest plans unveiled Tuesday by Jones.
The School Board unanimously approved the new construction plans, which will now go to the Board of Supervisors for its approval.
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .