Some New Bloomfield educators and staff have good news to look forward to on their paychecks in the coming school year.
The New Bloomfield Board of Education voted to adjust the non-certified staff salary schedule after staff noted an illogical discrepancy. Under the previous schedule, the annual raise staff could receive decreased significantly after 12 years.
For the first 11 years of their time with the district, non-certified staff pay would increase 26 cents per hour. At their 12th year, however, that raise decreased to just 12 cents, where it remained with the exception of a 15-cent raise after 16 years.
Superintendent David Tramel said he saw little logical reason to give their more loyal, longer-term employees smaller raises, and thus less incentive to remain with the district. The board agreed to adjust the scale to reflect a 26-cent raise each year, regardless of how long that employee has been with the district.
"Someone who had been here for 20 years had less of an annual raise than someone who'd been here for two," Tramel said. "Employees will see an average raise of 8 percent overall. Some will get a larger amount than others, but I'd argue all day that this is the way it has to be."
Additionally, the salary schedule had been frozen for the past three years. The board unanimously agreed to unfreeze the schedule and allow raises to progress as normal.
The certified staff pay scale and schedule remains the same going into the 2013-14 school year.
In other business, the district was also able to save money with a renegotiation of their contract with Durham School Services, the transportation contractor New Bloomfield schools utilizes.
When the district first signed with Durham, they included a clause to grandfather existing district drivers into the system at their original pay level. As those employees left, they were replaced by less-expensive drivers. As a result, though the per-mile and hour charge on activity trips and minimum activity trip charge per bus will increase for the coming school year, the rates on routes, special education bus routes and vocational tech-school trips to Jefferson City have all decreased.