By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Hays USD 489 school board discussed creating a wage schedule for classified staff at its meeting Monday night.
The school board was first presented a classified wage study on June 16. It found several classes of USD 489 employees are not making as much as their peers. These included building secretaries, office assistants and clerical workers, and information technology assistants.
The starting wage for a USD 489 school secretary is $9.62 per hour, but the average starting wage for other Hays employers is $12.78. Comparable school districts pay an average of $11.08 and comparable cities pay an average starting wage of $13.45.
Office assistants and clerical workers start at $10.06 at USD 489, which is comparable to other school districts but is more than $2 below the average in the Hays community and $4 below the average in comparable cities.
IT assistants did start at $10.95 per hour at USD 489 with the average at peer districts at $13.38 and $11.87 in the city of Hays. Administration increased the pay for this position to be on par with paras and classroom aides, who perform similar duties.
Keith Hall, interim director of finance, suggested creating a wage schedule starting with secretarial staff. He said the hope would be to use the secretaries as a template to create schedules for other positions.
Faith Lochmann, HR coordinator, said the group could be divided into to town categories — front line secretaries and principal secretaries.
Hall said first the district needed to increase secretaries’ starting pay to be comparable to their peers. Those who are earning below that would receive a bump in pay. Administrators have yet to determine what would happen to those individuals who are above the starting wage. Do they also get a bump in pay or nothing, he asked.
Hall and the board discussed creating a schedule that included milestone pay increases for longevity.
Including longevity in a wage schedule could help attract new employees and be incentive for current employees to stay, Hall said. Board members asked if that would include work experience from another employer, and Hall said he thought it would. Custodians already have longevity included in their pay scale.
Board member Greg Schwartz said he wanted to see how benefits compared at comparable employers in the area. Schwartz suggested the Hays school district employees might be receiving better benefits. He said the entire compensation package needs to be considered.
Schwartz said he loved the concept of a wage schedule, but he didn’t want to set the wages too high.
“These aren’t the only wages we have to deal with, and they are also not the only problems we have to deal with,” he said. “I want to be responsible to make sure we are paying people competitive wages, but I also don’t want to be irresponsible in paying them over what the market rate should be such that we can’t have other things like lunch rooms and thing like that.”
Hall said the administration has yet to plug numbers into a new wage schedule. His plan is to do so and then bring an option back for the school board to review. He said he does not think the district will be able to make wage adjustments for the entire classified staff in one year, rather he suggested doing it in sections with secretarial staff first.
He said he would try to factor in benefits when creating the schedule.