New pay policies for Beaufort County School District board members, employees

While cost-of-living supplements won't make their way to Beaufort County School District employees until December, many officials and staff are beginning the year with padded paychecks.

New policies created last month and in June resulted in pay bumps for two groups of people -- members of the Beaufort County Board of Education and classified employees, such as teaching assistants, clerks and office managers.

The most recent change occurred Aug. 18, when board members voted 7-3 to raise the stipend they receive for full-day work sessions and specially-called board meetings for personnel hearings from $50 to $100 each. Effective immediately, they will receive that amount on top of a travel allowance and a $7,500 salary.

As before, board members will receive only $50 for regularly scheduled board meetings and work sessions. They receive only $50 when a meeting and work session fall on the same day.

The policy does not apply to board chairman Bill Evans, who receives only a salary of $8,500, not per-meeting stipends.

Members said at their Aug. 18 meeting the policy could cost an additional $7,000 to $8,000.

Earlier in the summer, the board approved a new salary step schedule for the district's 808 classified employees, which includes all positions but teachers and administrators with education credentials.

No salaries were decreased and all but a few went up last week, when those employees received their first paychecks under the new system, including their retroactive raise for two extra months.

The board voted unanimously 9-0 to adopt the plan. It will increase the district's payroll for classified employees by about 3 percent to just less than $30.8 million.

The change was the result of a $30,320 salary study of the district's classified workers, which compared pay for positions in Beaufort County to a dozen other school systems in the region and Beaufort Memorial Hospital.

The new plan adjusted employees' pay immediately, in some cases adding thousands of dollars to their salaries, according to the independent study by Management Advisory Group International.

"We wanted to get them where they needed to be now," said Alice Walton, chief officer of human resources. "The problem should be solved."

Walton says the raises vary per person, though she recalled one special education assistant at Hilton Head Island Elementary School had her salary go up $6,000 to $18,000 a year.

The MAG study found the district overall paid workers less than comparable school systems, and was slightly less competitive than necessary to recruit and retain the best employees.

Still, the district also froze the salaries of 22 workers who were receiving as much or more than they should, according to the study. One position's mid-range pay, the athletic director, was nearly 20 percent higher in Beaufort County than on average among the school systems surveyed.

If the district's new $1,000 cost-of-living supplement would place them over the maximum salary in their step schedule, those workers will not receive that full bonus either, Superintendent Jeff Moss explained at the Aug. 18 meeting.

All employees -- including teachers -- who get the supplement will receive it in two installments at the end of December and May.

Classified employees have had a step schedule for two years, though it did not adjust salaries to start.

Evans said another classified salary study was conducted before he was on the board five years ago, though as he remembers it, the policy was a mess.

People had an opportunity to appeal their new salaries, and they took it.

"There was a perception that some people got treated better than other people," Evans said.

The new plan has raised some concerns, Walton said, though the majority are due to misunderstandings. For example, some workers who went down several steps thought they were losing money when in reality, they were given the chance to make more, she said.

Going forward, the district will review salaries in the region at least every three years to make sure it stays competitive, Walton said.

Salary comparisons

Notes about the data:

The "Region" figures in the chart below were calculated based on salary surveys in the following school districts and entities, averaging mid-range salaries.

• Berkeley County schools
• Charleston County schools
• Richland District 2 schools
• Columbia County (Ga.) schools
• Glynn County (Ga.) schools
• Savannah-Chatham County (Ga.) schools
• Lexington District 1 schools
• Lexington-Richland District 5 schools
• Richmond County (Ga.) schools
• Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) schools
• Aiken County schools
• Beaufort County government and
• Beaufort Memorial Hospital

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Follow reporter Rebecca Lurye on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Rebecca.

Related content:

• Squeezed out: 1 in 10 Beaufort County School District teachers leaving at year's end, May 28, 2015
• State, county consider need to improve teacher pay, February 11, 2015

This story was originally published September 8, 2015 at 7:48 PM with the headline "New pay policies for Beaufort County School District board members, employees."