- April 23, 2024
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Having been passed up for inclusion in recent pay raises, school administrators requested their own. The School Board tabled the issue.
Administrators filled half of the chamber room at the June 30 Flagler County School Board meeting, in support of a 2% pay step increase.
Having been overlooked last week, when the board approved 2% increases to instructional and support staff contracts, administrators, led by Old Kings Elementary School Principal Nancy Willis and Matanzas High School Principle Chris Pryor, made a case for recognition.
Last meeting’s approved raises were contracted and, unless a state of “financial disaster” was declared, the board was legally required to approve them. Step increases are not assured in administrative contracts.
“Our administrators work very hard every year,” Willis said. “They go to work before the teachers. They’re there way after the teachers … We’re an A school because of our administrators, and our staff, and our teachers.” (For more on the A grade, see the story on Page 3.)
Willis urged that raises be reconsidered.
“Some of our assistant principals make less than some teachers,” she said. “If we lose these people, it’s going to hurt our system.”
Pryor took the podium with a sack of M&Ms.
If each M&M represents $1,000, he said, the whole bag would represent the county’s entire $97.5 million school budget. To put the proposed pay raise — which would tally a net total of $35,464, after the previously approved four-workday reduction — into perspective, the full M&M budget could be lined, one candy next to the other, from the front door of the Government Services Building to the entrance of Flagler Palm Coast High School, he said.
In contrast — he held up a baggy colored with a couple dozen M&Ms — the raise is negligible. It’s .004% of the budget, he pointed out.
“We’re asking only for the same consideration this year that you gave to everyone else in the district,” he said. “We do a good job for you. We’ll continue to do a good job for you whether you give us the step increase or not. But I’m asking you to do the right thing for us, too.”
Then the School Board responded.
“It was a disservice to the employees by not having a discussion (about administrative raises last meeting),” School Board member Andy Dance said. “I carry some of the blame for that.”
He suggested tabling the issue and conducting a self-review, comparing salary and rank figures of our system to those of nearby districts.
But some didn’t see the need.
“We cut days to save money,” said School Board member Trevor Tucker. “Now if we give them a raise, we’re paying them more to do less.”
Raises were instated across the board, though, Chairwoman Sue Dickinson said. “So why is this group being punished?”
School Board member Colleen Conklin responded: “There was no intention to be disrespectful to anybody. (But) you can’t tell the community on one hand that we have a financial emergency … and then on the other hand say that we’re going to have a step increase … We cut our school day down … It doesn’t wash.”
Dickinson called the pay raise “peanuts.”
“Come on, folks, $36,000?” she said. “We’re talking about 88 people.”
She noted that administrators, due to state mandate, already lost about 3% of their salaries in contribution to their retirement benefits.
“The light at the end of the tunnel’s not going to get lighter any time soon,” she said. “It’s not fair to them.”
Conklin called administrators “the fallout” from last meeting’s decision. “Unfortunately,” she said, “… the sky’s not the limit.”
The motion was tabled for further discussion on July 19.
“We’re going to workshop it, and we’re going to get the numbers, and eventually we’ll be back,” Dickinson said.
