Official seeking back pay

By BARBARA BEHRENDT

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 9, 2000

INVERNESS -- Three years ago, when Superintendent Pete Kelly established a new pay scale for administrators, he told district leaders and the public that he wanted to create a more equitable compensation system.

He also explained that some individuals' experience levels might register at a different level on the new scale than they had on the former scale. Kelly arranged it that way because he wanted to avoid overly large pay increases, which the school system couldn't afford.

In time, Kelly promised, affected employees would return to their proper experience/pay levels.

Neal Weiss, who is retiring at the end of this month as the district's director of exceptional student education, thinks he was caught in the crunch of that changeover in pay structure.

On Tuesday, Weiss plans to take an unusual step. He said he will ask the School Board for $9,100 in back pay that he says is owed to him since the new scale went into effect.

Weiss said that pleas to Kelly have not solved the problem, and he hopes the board will see fit to provide its own kind of equity.

After 15 years, administrators hit the step known as "longevity." Once they are there, they stay at that highest-paid level for their category of job.

But when the pay structure was changed for the 1997-98 school year, instead of being placed on the longevity step, Weiss was placed on the step for eight years of experience, although he had been with the district for more than 20 years. The following year he jumped up a couple of places.

But since the new salary schedule went into effect, Weiss calculated that he has lost $9,100 in salary by being placed lower than his actual experience level. For the upcoming school year, a director-level position in the district brings with it a salary of between $58,400 and $61,200, depending on experience level.

Not only has his placement at a lower rung on the experience portion of the scale cost Weiss thousands of dollars a year, but it also reduces what he will receive for retirement. Such benefits are based on an employee's five greatest earning years.

Since Weiss will leave at the end of the month, he won't be around to see whether future bumps in the administrative pay scale would, as Kelly promised years ago, have returned him to his rightful place on the scale and compensated him for what he has lost. So Weiss thinks he has lost out in the deal -- unless the School Board sees things his way.

"I want to point out that administrators are the only portion of the school employees who are not represented by a union. Had we been represented by a union, it would have been absolutely unacceptable to reduce a person's longevity," Weiss said. "I'm not comfortable because I feel like, as an administrator, I've been punished for not being represented by a union."

He added, "I'm not sure that Mr. Kelly was being fair towards administrators."

Kelly rejected that claim. Administrators were told up front that the district couldn't afford to pay all the administrators at their old experience levels. More than two dozen people were in that position.

"We were not able to get everybody on their step as quickly as we might have liked," Kelly said. "This year we gave them all an added step, and next year we'll be moving them all up to the right step."

Kelly said he could not recommend that Weiss be paid the extra dollars because then he would have to pay all those who lost out from the system their extra pay as well. The district cannot afford such a payout, he said. He said people understood that at the time of the change in the salary structure.

"I believe that it was fair, at least as fair as we could afford to be," Kelly said.

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