York County Schools employees will receive a one-time boost in their paychecks by Dec. 7.
The York County School Board unanimously approved a plan Monday authorizing Superintendent Eric Williams to make a one-time payment to all eligible staff. The payment will be equal to 1.5 percent of the staff member’s base pay, or $400, whichever is higher.
Eligible staff are defined as full-time employees and part-time employees who qualify for health benefits. Hourly staff are not included.
The payments are possible because the division saved about $700,000 due to an unexpected amount of retirements at the end of last school year. The circumstances weren’t ideal, according to School Board member Cindy Kirschke, who said her chief concern is keeping qualified teachers from leaving the division.
York County Schools has been unable to offer step pay increases or raises in the wake of the economic recession. Facing revenue shortfalls, the school division has requested additional funding from the York County Board of Supervisors in the past two years, both times asking for extra money to cover employee pay increases. The supervisors have repeatedly objected to funding raises for school employees, saying it is unfair when county employees haven’t received significant pay increases.
At the School Board meeting on Monday, Williams said the bonuses should be “viewed as a positive, but by no means lessen the recognition of long-term changes that need to occur.”
Board member Mark Medford echoed Kirschke’s concern that the payments serve as a Band-Aid until the board can address pay when it drafts its fiscal year 2014 budget this winter. “We have no direction to go but that direction,” he said. “We have to do it. We hear a lot about a cliff…we’ve been over our own cliff and seen the repercussions.”
