May 29, 2014 Fifth Thursday Meeting: Pendleton County Schools Pay Scales 2014-15

As always, these are my opinions only, and not the opinions of the Pendleton County School Board or any other individual board members.

Pay scales for Pendleton County School employees were up for Board approval at this meeting.  My reasoning for opposing these scales will sound eerily similar to last year’s reasoning (May 30, 2013 Meeting that was blogged on June 1, 2013).

Classified Salary Schedule There will be debate about the size on any raises, but the pay raises were applied fairly across the entire Classified Salary Schedule.  Therefore, I was in favor of this portion of the 2014-15 proposal.

Certified Salary Schedule As was the case last year, this fair and equitable treatment of compensation was not the case for the Certified portion of the proposal.  The best description I can find for these pay scales is “targeted favoritism”.  In order to understand the trends, one should have all three of the 2012-13, 2013-14, and 2014-15 Certified Pay Scales.  You then need to simply compute the percentage change from the prior year’s scale for every spot (or cell) on the scale (every step and Rank column).  This might take 1-2 hours for both year’s changes.

Problem #1: The Senior Rank 1 Group Last year’s trend was continued this year by applying approximately 2% increases to the cells of those hired in 1991 (or before) that have their Rank 1.  There is a significant reduction (-7.1%) in the cell just behind this group.  This year that cell is the 22 year step.  Last year it was the 21 year step (-6.4%).  If this trend continues, you could expect an even larger correction (8% or more) to the 23 year step next year.  This “snowplow wave of money” is good news if you were hired in 1991 or prior, and terrible news to those junior to this cell.  Interestingly, Mr. Strong states that he is doing this to smooth out the bumps in the pay scale and make sure that each year everyone is seeing an increase.  However, what is alarming is an even greater bump is being created in the pay scale where Mr. Strong will be attached this coming July (2014).  Mr. R. Anthony Strong will now be attached to the teacher’s pay scale with an index of 2.44.  This year group has cumulatively received an increase of 6% the last two years.  In my opinion, this is why our superintendent’s salary should never have been linked to our teacher’s pay scale.  Coincidence?  I leave that up to you to decide.  The temptation is simply too great to “scale up”, or protect or improve one’s own paycheck.

Problem #2: The Junior Rank 3 Group Another Certified group sure to be extremely disappointed this year is our Rank 3 teachers.  These teachers face a requirement to get their Master’s degree by their tenth year, which will move them to the higher paying Rank 2 column.  The 7-10 year step in this column took hits ranging from -3.4% to -9.6%.  The district currently has no teachers in this group, but there are 14 teachers in the 1-6 year steps that will be in these cells in the next several years until they complete their Master’s degree.  Just when these junior teachers need the money to help pay for these self-funded graduate degrees, the rug is being “pulled out” in order to “smooth out” this column’s step increases.  How fair and equitable is this treatment from our Board that completely pays for our Superintendent’s doctorate degree?  Another consideration is that it becomes more difficult to attract new talent to our teacher ranks when the junior teacher pay scales become less attractive.

Ever-Growing Administration A very disturbing process added an administrator to our ranks at this meeting.  Best practice would be to address additions to our staff as an action agenda item on the Pendleton County School Board Meeting Agenda.  This was not the case for this meeting, as embedded in the salary schedule was the addition of a second Director of Curriculum and Assessment.  This staff addition leaves the general public in the dark, as they are not aware that a staff addition is occurring.  This is especially disturbing when conducted by a Superintendent that has been noted in an article in Kentucky Teacher (June 7, 2012) for “transparency”.  I also disagree with this staff addition because I believe this district is “administration heavy”, and I am reluctant to vote for additions especially when we have cut two teachers this year.  I did suggest converting the “Director of Districtwide Programs” to one of the two “Directors of Curriculum and Assessment” to make it administration neutral for this coming year.  Our board should be voting on added positions as separate action items and not buried in the middle of the approval of salary schedules.  This is bad business practice and doesn’t hold board members accountable to the ever increasing size of central office administration.

Why I voted “No” As was the case last year, I made a motion to separate the certified pay scales and the certified administrative salary indexes from the proposed action item, and vote on them separately.  Unlike last year, this motion failed when I did not get a second from my fellow Board members.  Therefore, I voted “No” on this large action item.