By GARRETT SAGER
Hays Post

During Monday night’s Hays USD 489 Board of Education meeting and work session, Superintendent John Thissen provided feedback to the board about a wage study and underpaid positions, and discussed results on a post-bond election survey.

With the help of a study done by Fort Hays State University, Thissen said the investigation shows classified staff members of the district are significantly underpaid.

“The survey shows that together, our classified staff is underpaid by about $150,000 in salary,” he said.

Two months ago, Thissen told the board how many of faculty and staff are well underpaid compared to the same positions around the state.

“We are at the bottom in the state in some of these positions,” Thissen said. “We simply do not have the money.”

One of the positions that USD 489 is at the bottom in is bus drivers.

The district pays its bus drivers $10 per hour and have had to cut back on some routes. With increasing student numbers, the district might need to add routes and up the pay of the bus drivers.

“Our district is growing in the elementary and middle school parts and, with our growing numbers, more routes may need to be added,” Thissen said.

Para-educators and substitute teachers were also a topic of discussion.

Currently, the district pays the lowest in the area for substitute teachers and struggles to get substitutes for that reason.

Thissen said raising pay for substitutes would add an extra $12,000 to the budget.

As for the paras, the district goes through one about every other week, according to Thissen, because the district pays so little and offers no benefits.

“They often find jobs somewhere else, mainly because we can’t pay them and do not offer benefits,” he said.

USD 489 pays paras for 5.5 hours at a rate of $9 per hour.

“Five in a half hours a day is simply not enough,” Thissen said.

For the district to fix the majority of the salary issues facing it, it would cost the district around $1.5 million, Thissen said.

“There is a need to fix this,” he said. “If the district could somehow come fall into $1.5 million, I would strongly urge you that we use the money for this — keeping in mind this would be a yearly thing.”

The issue is one that will need to be revisited and will not be acted upon for a while, Thissen said.

The board also heard back from the June 7 bond election survey that was conducted after the failed bond attempt the board had last summer.

“It confirmed things expected,” Sarah Rankin, board vice president, said.

The intention of the survey was to give the board an idea of which components were supported in the election and which were not, as well as provide some direction toward the next bond election.

“There’s some good and encouraging information that comes from this survey when moving forward on getting ready for another bond election,” said Mike Walker, assistant director at the FHSU Docking Institute.

Thissen, who had yet to be hired when the bond election failed, said he was not surprised with the results of the survey.

“I think we all figured what would come out of this survey since it came after the failed bond issue, but as you can see, this gives us different areas we can target,” he said.

One of the points of interest was the difference in the support and non-support was based on how connected the individuals were with the district.

The board also passed motions on two items at the beginning of the meeting.

The board passed unanimously to move the February early release date from Feb. 1 to 8.

Also passed was the adoption of board policies GAOF salary deductions and IIBF acceptable use guidelines.