By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Hays USD 489 school board voted in a special meeting at noon Thursday to stop a 4.6 percent pay increase for certain staff.
The staff, who incorrectly received the raise since July, will not have to pay back what they have already received.
The board met at the Rockwell Administrative Center to a standing-room-only crowd.
Classified staff and administrators received a pay increase in July of 4.6 percent without the school board’s authorization. Superintendent John Thissen said it was an administrative error and took responsibility for the mistake.
Thissen noted the 4.6 percent raise for all staff had been budgeted.
The error includes about 112 people who work for USD 489. It does not include custodians, who were covered under a contract negotiated by their union, SEIU, or paraprofessionals, who received a $2 per hour raise in a board effort to recruit and retain more special education staff.
The board has reached impasse with the teachers’ union. Hays NEA and board representatives will meet with a federal meditator to try to resolve that dispute next Thursday.
School Board President Mandy Fox proposed the district stop the 4.6 pay increase for classified staff and administrators until the board could reach an agreement with the teachers’ union.
The Hays district has typically given the same raise to other staff as it gives to teachers. Teachers are upset because they want a 4.6 percent raise as was given to the custodians and maintenance workers and initially given to the other staff.
However, when the teachers looked closer at the formula that was presented in negotiations, they realized their average raise was about 3.6 percent.
Thissen said at the meeting Thursday, if the board did nothing, he would be obligated to stop the 4.6 percent raise that was not approved by the board and require those who received the raise in error to pay back that money. This would come in the form of pay reductions until the money was paid back.
Fox’s motion initially failed to pass with Fox and board members Lane Bickle and Greg Swartz voting for the motion, and board members Mike Walker, Sophia Rose Young and Luke Oborny voting against.
Oborny and Young both said they thought the staff who received the raise in error should continue to receive the same pay and not have to pay any money back.
“I feel we as a board knew what was going on,” Oborny said. “In April it was discussed we were going to look at a 4.6. We discussed it with all of these different groups. We then negotiated with SEIU to a successful contract at 4.6. It all seemed to be going great until we found a math error in August, and that seems to be where that train seemed to derail.
“I don’t like how John [Thissen] has seemingly take all the responsibility and guilt here, because this was not a surprise to me. I felt through our meetings, and perhaps they were upstairs, I felt this was the way we were going, this is the way we should be going, this was our, as in all of us, this was our plan. I am confused. I don’t understand why we are backing up and going in a different direction now.”
Walker said he was very hesitant to take away someone’s pay.
“I am especially concerned, no offense to the administration, but the folks who earn less money — the bus drivers and secretaries,” he said.
Oborny echoed Walker’s sentiments.
He said he received an email from a classified staff member with the notification of their pay increase.
“It is still less — this person has worked in our district for years, for eight years — and it is still less than what I start employees out at Nex-Tech,” he said. “Today I cannot vote to decrease.”
Schwartz noted the board never voted on the raise, which is against board policy and state statute.
Walker proposed a compromise that would allow the raises for most of the group involved, such as kitchen workers, bus drivers and secretaries, to continue, but administrators and directors would stop receiving the raise until negotiations were resolved with the teachers.
That motion died for lack of a second.
After that motion died and Thissen clarified he would have to require staff to pay back raises if the board was unable to come to a consensus, Walker said he would change his vote on Fox’s motion.
Young said she was upset with the how the motion was stated. She said she wished the motion to be split. She said she wanted staff to be able to keep the pay they had already received, but she also wanted to continue the 4.6 percent raise until the teacher negotiations were completed.
Walker restated Fox’s motion. He refused to take amendments.
The motion passed with Fox, Bickle, Schwartz and Walker voting for and Young and Oborny voting against. Board member Paul Adams was absent.
The board then met in a short executive session. The board took no action after the executive session.
Evelyn Younker, cook manager at Hays Middle School, has worked for the school district for 36 years.
“I feel they should have given us that 4.6, and I believe it is only right that they leave it,” she said.
She said the paras and bus drivers have both received raises in the last couple of years and it is time the rest of the staff received raises. She said she has lost her retirement package and health insurance and had sick days capped.
“I am out here now where they say, ‘Stay, stay, stay. We are really going to take care of you when you get close to retirement age.’ They aren’t taking care of any of us,” she said.
Younker was using her extra income to pay down bills. She said she was counting on that money.
“Guess what? It’s gone. Now I have to figure something else out,” she said. “It is sad because we are so underpaid. It is so ridiculous.”
Kevin Ubert, a food service employee for 12 years, said, “For too long we have been taken advantage of and not been treated fairly and properly. Until we stand up for ourselves and prove a point to the board and everyone that has treated us improperly, nothing will change or get done.
“We have to stand united together and prove a point to the board that we need to be treated fairly and compensated properly.”
Kim Schneweis, negotiator for the Hays NEA, and Kathy Rome, Kansas NEA representative, addressed the crowd after the board meeting.
Schneweis thanked the crowd for attending the meeting. She noted the teachers’ pay is not legally bound to pay for other staff. The Hays NEA can’t legally negotiate for the other staff.
Rome said, “This easily could have been taken care of today with someone making a motion to give you your 4.6 percent pay raise and be done with it. It is not tied to teacher negotiations. It should have been taken care of today.”
Rome said classified staff and administrators can join the NEA and urged the staff to do that.
RUSSELL MAIN STREET
