School board to discuss new state money, fall bonus

Published 12:05 am Sunday, April 24, 2022

SALISBURY — Rowan-Salisbury Schools has received additional money from the state to pay a bonus to faculty this school year.

The state has awarded poorer counties with additional money to provide a supplement with the goal of bringing their faculty pay more in line with wealthier counties.

In the case of RSS, this translates to $1.39 million to be paid out in single installments of about $825 in the June paychecks of a list of eligible staff, including teachers, instructional support staff and school administrators paid based on the teacher salary schedule.

Central office administrators and non-certified staff are not eligible.

Pre-K teachers and assistant principals paid on the administrator salary schedule are eligible to receive the same bonus, but the state did not pay to cover them. At Monday’s meeting, district finance staff plan to ask the RSS Board of Education to approve taking $64,000 out of local funding to cover those employees.

The meeting will begin at 4:30 p.m. at Wallace Educational Forum and will be live streamed via vimeo.com/rssboe as well.

The board will also discuss setting aside federal money to help pay for retention bonuses in the fall.

District administration will request allocating $4.9 million to pay bonuses in the fall for all employees who received the last staff-wide bonus payed out in December and to use the remaining federal relief money the district has to help pay for it.

The bonuses will be available for full-time, permanent employees and prorated for part-time employees.

In November, the board approved $2,000 bonuses for all employees and in June of 2021 the board approved setting aside $3.3 million in bonuses to be paid to all staff based on their salaries.

In other agenda items:

• Board chair Dean Hunter plans to share an update on the search for a new superintendent. Former superintendent Tony Watlington resigned effective Friday and will start as superintendent of public schools in Philadelphia in June. Chief Academic Officer Jason Gardner is serving as superintendent for RSS in the interim.

• The board plans to approve several items from its meeting earlier this month on the consent agenda, including the local career and technical education plan, a pair of policy updates and a budget amendment.

About Carl Blankenship

Carl Blankenship has covered education for the Post since December 2019. Before coming to Salisbury he was a staff writer for The Avery Journal-Times in Newland and graduated from Appalachian State University in 2017, where he was editor of The Appalachian.

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