Following months of rigorous workshop discussions and previous open meetings centered on improving district wages, the Trigg County Board of Education used Thursday night to unanimously change the trajectory of several career opportunities on the campus.
A 2% raise is coming to the Trigg County School system effective July 1, aside from four groups: custodians, food service workers, bus monitors and nurses, who will instead see targeted and nuanced increases in pay.
Custodians, food service workers and bus monitors will have their pay immediately jump from $9.41/hr to $10.25/hr, with a 50-cent increase on last year’s starting base at year two, and then following their graduated annual scale.
Nurses, meanwhile, will see a $1.50/hr increase in pay — which in this district currently spans from $10.61/hour to $22.38/hour, plus board-approved benefit cost.
These decisions come after multiple conversations with faculty and administration, in which there was ultimately a concern not only for some competitive wages matching surrounding counties, but also for some employee retention within specific ranks.
Director of Operations Matt Ladd noted to board member Charlene Sheehan that the increased pay for custodians could be a step in the right direction for alleviating both staff and teachers.
Superintendent Bill Thorpe and Finance Officer Holly Greene both stated that the district’s current plan to allow teachers the opportunity to receive a stipend for cleaning would likely continue in the next academic year, even with this change to custodial pay.
Greene made it a point to inform the board that these kinds of pay increases do put Trigg County Schools and its jobs at a more competitive rate against some surrounding districts.
Planning periods, Greene said, are getting a bump in pay, too.
Sheehan also made note that both Trigg County’s high school volleyball coach and wrestling coach currently don’t have stipends that are near or equitable with other coaches and assistants, and she’d like to see that changed with an amendment in the summer.
Greene said stipends hadn’t changed in years, for reasons unknown and before her time in the district.
Thorpe suggested the district form a “stipend committee” in perpetuity, in order to adequately review all such forms of pay across the campus — save the ones protected by either state statute or site-based decision-making groups.
And the board, again, unanimously agreed.
Greene said that it costs the district nearly $126,000 annually per 1% increase of pay, meaning a 2% raise will total north of $250,000. Sheehan, alongside others, said she was “good with it.”
Trigg County Schools approved only a 1% district-wide raise on March 25, 2021.