{"id":75029,"date":"2020-02-27T20:22:30","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T03:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bayfield-schools-plan-to-increase-below-market-wages-start-with-secretaries\/"},"modified":"2020-02-28T03:22:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T03:22:30","slug":"bayfield-schools-plan-to-increase-below-market-wages-start-with-secretaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bayfield-schools-plan-to-increase-below-market-wages-start-with-secretaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Bayfield schools plan to increase below-market wages, start with secretaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Lynn
Lynn Ferguson, secretary at Bayfield Primary School, hands a Wolverine Paw card to a student for excellent behavior. Ferguson advocated for higher pay for secretaries in the Bayfield School District at a school board meeting Tuesday.<\/span>Shannon Mullane\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

BAYFIELD \u2013 The Bayfield school district is gradually increasing its employee salaries to market rates, and it is starting by giving a raise to its lowest-paid group: school secretaries.<\/p>\n

The district launched its first salary study in collective memory at the beginning of the school year, said Kevin Aten, superintendent. While many employee groups\u2019 beginning salaries are 10% below market average, school secretaries\u2019 starting pay was 24% below the market, according to the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really love my job. There\u2019s no place I\u2019d rather be,\u201d said Lynn Ferguson, the district\u2019s head secretary, at Tuesday\u2019s school board meeting. \u201cI just want to make sure that everybody understands and recognizes that secretaries are on the lowest pay scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beginning school secretaries are paid $12.05 per hour, a rate that increases with experience. But others with comparable experience \u2013 aides, custodians, bus drivers, kitchen assistants and other positions \u2013 all earn more. Not only that, but in 2018, they received a pay decrease when they lost a stipend, Ferguson said.<\/p>\n

The board voted unanimously to increase the hourly rate for all secretaries by $2.50, bringing the staring salary for school secretaries from $12.05 to $14.55, closer to the market rate of $15.55.<\/p>\n

While the district has known school secretaries were paid below market rates, the salary study showed by exactly how much, Aten said.<\/p>\n

The original proposal was to increase the hourly rate by $3.50, but the board\u2019s decision puts secretary wages within 8% of the market rate, he said.<\/p>\n

Secretaries constantly switch between everything from monitoring security cameras, helping with attendance, handing out Band-Aids to coordinating deliveries \u2013 in addition to administrative tasks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to honor these very important employees,\u201d Aten said. \u201cAnybody that\u2019s ever been in a school knows that these are very important people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead<\/div>\n

The district sees market-based compensation as a \u201ccritical\u201d strategy to continue to attract staff, according to the study.<\/p>\n

Still, with a tight budget to consider, board members weighed funding priorities during the meeting. Higher salaries could mean less funding for other projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re overspending by up to $200,000. We\u2019re doing that consciously to spend down some reserve fund balance,\u201d Aten said. \u201cYou can\u2019t do that forever, but it\u2019s allowing us to reinvest in our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, the study showed that the starting salary for many employee groups is below market average \u2013 including bus drivers, principals and directors.<\/p>\n

For teachers, the beginning teacher salary is 6.4% below market rate; however, teachers with masters degrees and more experience are paid up to 6.9% above market rates.<\/p>\n

The fact that Bayfield can pay experienced teachers higher-than-average salaries proves the district is competitive in recruiting and retaining experienced teachers in the region, the study said.<\/p>\n

The next step for the district is to prioritize employee groups for raises, while considering a limited budget, state funding, ongoing costs and market-driven factors.<\/p>\n

The push to increase raises districtwide is \u201cfantastic,\u201d Ferguson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very happy that it is a raise, although I do wish that it would\u2019ve been the proposed $3.50,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

smullane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

many employees are 10% below average rates<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[731,2766,155,28,29,762,4290],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-75029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bayfield","tag-bayfield-school-district","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-teachers","tag-teaching-and-learning"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75029"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=75029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}