Beaufort Co. schools staff to get bonus for work during COVID this school year
About 1,000 full-time employees of Beaufort County School District are getting a $1,000 bonus in January for their work during the pandemic in the 2021-22 school year, the school board voted unanimously Tuesday night.
The bonuses are for active, full-time employees who aren’t teachers and who have worked for the district for at least 45 days. The bonuses will be distributed in January, and will cost $1,140,455.
A $1,000 bonus for teachers that had been mandated by the state was approved earlier this year and will show up in paychecks Friday, according to district spokesperson Candace Bruder.
The money for the new round of bonuses is coming from savings in the district’s $274.2 million 2021-22 budget — the majority from money that hasn’t been paid in salaries due to employee vacancies.
Savings in the travel and substitute teacher budgets are also being used, district chief financial officer Tonya Crosby said Tuesday.
“What is happening really is taking money that comes from all those vacancies and giving it to the people that had to deal with those shortages,” school board member Richard Geier said Tuesday.
Superintendent Frank Rodriguez, who would be eligible for the bonus as an administrator and who got an $21,020 raise last month, asked to not receive the $1,000.
The school district started the fall with record-high numbers of COVID-19 cases and quarantines, with one in every eight students quarantined at one point in September.
But COVID cases in the district have fallen, along with numbers across Beaufort County.
Rodriguez said Tuesday that the district reported 16 COVID-19 cases last week, one a staff member and 15 students. In the same timeframe, 58 students and one staff member were quarantining.
District staff got a similar bonus in May, with a $1,000 stipend going to full-time employees and a sliding-scale stipend for part-time employees.