SALISBURY — The Rowan-Salisbury Schools Board of Education is planning to consider broad pay increases for its classified staff on Thursday that would go into effect immediately.

The meeting will begin at 4:30 p.m. at Wallace Educational Forum. The meeting can be attended in person or viewed online at vimeo.com/rssboe.

Classified employees broadly include non-certified hourly staff like bus drivers, nutrition workers and teacher assistants

The state has mandated public school districts increase minimum wages for classified employees from $13 to $15 per hour and a minimum increase of 2.5%, but district administration is recommending the board ensure a minimum 4% increase for every classified employee.

The recommendation also includes regrading for job classifications. For example: A custodian making $13 per hour at the entry level would increase to $15 and a custodian with 10 years of experience would increase from $13 to $16.16.

The district’s human resources and finance department plan to audit the employee pay steps and update their pay grades next month with the expectation employees will see the increases in their August checks.

The cost of implementing the increases will be about $3.9 million.

In other agenda items:

• The board will consider the recommendations of a curriculum audit that would drop some resources and add i-Ready as the district’s formative assessment tool. The district stands to reduce its curriculum contract costs by about $400,000 compared to the previous school year.

• The board will consider approving food purchasing contracts for the district’s nutrition services. Administration will recommend the lowest bid for food from Gordon’s Foodservice for $3 million and $956,000 in supplies from the same company. U.S. Foods declined to renew its contract with the schools citing increasing costs.

• The board will consider adopting a new code of conduct with stricter consequences for vaping.

• The board will view a final budget amendment as part of the year-end process to close its finances for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.