The Durham school board unanimously approved employee pay rates for the current school year Thursday, but not before hearing staff complaints on a familiar theme — pay errors.
Pay schedules posted on DPS’ website last week included several mistakes, such as incomplete pay rates for speech and language pathologists, school psychologists, and audiologists.
The pay mistakes felt like deja vu to some employees. Payroll errors were at the heart of a DPS crisis last year, in which the district approved raises for classified staff that it could not afford. The mistakes affected roughly 1,300 workers and led to mass sick-outs by employees in protest.
“This was sickeningly reminiscent of that Tuesday in January when we learned just how little our county thought of our classified coworkers….,” DPS speech therapist Bethany Pergerson said at Thursday’s meeting. “Now we have these ‘corrected’ salary schedules, but there are significant concerns.”
District hires a third payroll consultant
The compensation schedules were designed by Eyrie Success, the third outside contractor hired by the district to assist with salary schedules. Eyrie Success was hired by the school system on September 4 for 30 days, nearly a month after the board originally planned to approve compensation schedules.
At Thursday night’s meeting, Eyrie Success’ founder and CEO, Raushawna Price, responded to comments about the pay scale errors.
“I do want to…acknowledge that in our 15 days of working through this work, that there were some errors that we did need to correct, and that is a part of the transparency, and seeing many eyes on the work allows for that to happen, it wasn’t behind a curtain, it was…forward. And, there is vulnerability in that and I think that’s a good thing.”
According to its website, Eyrie Success is a leadership development organization whose areas of expertise include human resources, adult bullying in the workplace, conflict resolution and communication, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The website also states that Price is “the trademark owner of the phrase ‘Giver of Awesomeness™.’”
The board approved the salary schedules but noted the need for further analysis regarding how the new pay rates will be implemented.
The district’s new superintendent Anthony Lewis emphasized the need to “get it right,” alluding to last year’s pay crisis.
Board members push for budget info
Board member Natalie Beyer asked for reassurance that the district can afford the proposed pay rates, prompting a series of exchanges between board members and DPS administration.
“Part of the deja vu that is, that I’m wrestling with, is last year’s model, that we were assured that we had funds when we took a rushed vote,” Beyer said. “We didn’t. And that’s what led to the horrible MLK weekend of letters that staff received.”
Millicent Rogers, board chair, followed up, “Have we ran a model of what payroll looks like if we implement these salary schedules?”
“For the staff that were identified in the salary projection tool, yes,” replied Cierra Ojijo, DPS’ senior executive director of financial services.
Rogers pressed administration further.
“If we overspend in September, are y’all coming back to us in October and asking us to change people’s pay?”
“No, well—” said Ojijo.
“If we overspend in September…,” Rogers repeated.
Price chimed in, saying that the district can afford the new pay rates. But she added that the district may need to revisit its overall budget.
“What we’ve modeled, we can afford, and we won’t have to come back to the board to say we’re gonna reduce salary.” Price said. “And that doesn’t mean the total budget we might not have to make adjustments to, but we can do that in other ways.”
The school system gave classified staff an 11% raise in February in an attempt to end the payroll crisis. On Thursday, the board voted to allow current classified employees to keep that 11% raise, coupled with a 3% raise from the state.
Further, the board approved increases for some groups of classified and certified staff, including raises for classroom teachers with master’s degrees.
Other staff with master’s degrees did not receive similar raises, a sore point for many DPS workers.
Rogers acknowledged the omission.
“I guess this is an opportunity to apologize to all of our employees that have been working with a master’s, not getting that master’s pay,” she said. “Our intent was not realized here, and in this budget, and it has had an impact on the morale within the district and we are apologetic for that.”
The board directed administration to study pay rates for all employees with relevant master’s degrees to prevent their exclusion in the future.
Finally, the board passed a sweeping motion to place any employees not covered by the new pay schedule on the “most employee favorable” schedule for the current school year.
Durham Association of Educators President Mika Twietmeyer said she was glad to see board members asking more questions about pay.
“I think the motions by the board asking the administration for all that information is really important,” Twietmeyer said in an interview about the meeting.
“I think what we saw last night with all the questions, and the pause, asking for more information, is the board taking on more direct leadership in asking for as much information as possible.”
