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Schools

No big raises for School Board members

They vote to increase their salaries by 1.5 percent, less than what state guidelines allow, in order to stay on par with first-year teachers.

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN
Published December 15, 2005

BROOKSVILLE - Add School Board members to the long list of school district employees getting stingy raises this year.

Board members voted 3-2 Tuesday night to give themselves 1.5 percent raises and bring their salaries up to $30,200. Board members said they voted for the $453 increase because they didn't want to make more money than first-year teachers. If they followed state guidelines, they could have given themselves 4.64 percent raises that would have increased their salaries to $31,128.

The vote comes after a chaotic school year that saw public outrage over perceived favoritism of magnet schools and a lengthy, still-unresolved legal battle with former Powell Middle School principal Michael Ransaw.

Further, many teachers were frustrated after the teachers union and district negotiators said there was only enough money in the district budget for an average 4 percent raise this school year.

If the new contract is ratified by the teachers union and approved by the board, the salary of first-year teachers would increase by $800 to $30,200. School Board Vice Chairman John Druzbick said that salary was all he and his colleagues deserved.

"I feel extremely comfortable having the same salary that we can afford to pay our first-year teachers in Hernando County," Druzbick said.

Druzbick was joined by board members Pat Fagan and Robert Wiggins. School Board Chairman Jim Malcolm and board member Sandra Nicholson voted against the plan.

Malcolm said he supported a 4 percent raise since that was what all the other district employees were getting, and added that Druzbick's proposal "made no sense." He sarcastically mused out loud about whether Druzbick also wanted to include bonuses to reward board members for longevity and obtaining advanced degrees, similar to what teachers get.

Nicholson said that she would have supported voting for the full 4.64 percent.

"If we had taken the recommendation (for the full 4.64 percent raise), we were greedy. And if we do anything else, we're pandering," she said.

Still, the decision to go with the smaller raise might improve the way some teachers perceive board members.

Brian Phillips, president of the Hernando Classroom Teachers Association, said it would be unfair if board members got more money for part-time work than teachers did for holding full-time jobs.

"They have taken the first step in building trust between themselves and teachers in the district," he said.

Still, all the board members agreed with Phillips and the teachers union on another point: the need to lobby legislators so they could give teachers bigger raises. By nearly any statistical measure, Hernando teachers are among the worst-paid in the entire state.

Druzbick said he was disturbed after hearing stories of families in Hernando County with several generations of teachers. He said that the older teachers told the younger ones who just graduated from college with teaching degrees to find work in other parts of the state.

"When parents . . . are telling their children to not teach in Hernando because of the inequities (in funding), that is not good," he said.

Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or 352 848-1431.

[Last modified December 15, 2005, 00:32:19]