Raises Proposed For School Employees

Raises Proposed For School Employees 

BOBBY ARDOIN

St. Landry Now.com Editor

St. Landry Parish school employees are at this point scheduled to receive $1,000 annual pay raises that will cost the District about $2.5 million annually, according to Finance Committee action on Tuesday.

If the pay raise, which includes 1,826 workers, goes into effect following a vote of the entire School Board, beginning salaries for 894 District teachers will increase to $43,000 annually.

The 676 support employees which comprise custodians, cafeteria workers and classroom paraprofessionals, are included in the annual increase package which obtains its funding from a dedicated 1-cent parish wide sales tax that will also be used in November to provide school workers with a $1,500 annual stipend at a projected cost of about $3.4 million.

Overall the salary increase will affect 1,826 employees.

Finance Director Shaun Grantham told the Committee that she could not recommend expending more than $1,000 annually in raises for each employee..

Board member Renee Aymond told the Committee that a pay scale examination of District school employees reveals that workers at all levels are underpaid.

Aymond added that prospective St. Landry District employees are interested in the starting pay levels rather than bonuses which are paid at various times during the year..

Adding $1,000 dollars annually to employees salaries might help potential workers from researching surrounding Districts who are paying more than St. Landry, said Aymond.

“People are calling and asking me what is your starting salary, not what is being paid for a bonus,” said Aymond.

Superintendent Milton Batiste III said a District-created financial team spent nearly a year examining ways to fund salary increases for the District, which he said is the largest employer in St. Landry.

The raises, Batiste said, are aimed at providing financial longevity for employees.

Travis Bush, principal at Washington Vocational And Technical School in Washington, said a comparison of current salary schedules shows that it currently takes 18 years for St. Landry teachers to match the salaries of Lafayette Parish teachers who have no years of experience.

Board member Hazel Sias said she supports using revenues from the sales tax-driven Employees Compensation and Benefit Fund.

Sias recalled that when she was a District school employee, the ECBF was funded by the same 1-cent sales tax, but she and other workers never received any bonuses from the money that was generated by the tax.

Winnie Singleton Guillory, who represents the parish chapter of the National Federation Of Teachers, said that the District still needs to look at increasing salaries for the lowest paid workers, such as custodians and cafeteria employees.

Under the salary increase proposal, head custodians will be paid $24,105 annually, while assistant custodians will receive $23,529 a year.

Batiste reminded the Committee that custodians work at schools on a 12-month basis.