Monticello Live

Monticello School’s Personnel Policy Committee President Dupree Kelly addressed the Monticello School Board, Tuesday,  on recommendations made to increase stipends for certain staff members.

She told the board that the “committee met 4 weeks ago about updating stipends. Most of those recommendations stayed the same.” Mrs. Kelly reported that the Speech Therapist stipend is low as compared to other districts in our area. “The average combined salary is $56,596, and ours are making less than that. One who is a veteran. This is compared to other districts near us, McGehee and Lake Village for example.”

President Kelly went on to give examples in specific schools to show exactly what types of issues the committee was seeing with stipends as they are currently.

With MES Mrs. Kelly stated that, “everything has stayed the same, as well as MIS.” She reported that an individual has been volunteering to compile information for the yearbook, on top of their regular paid duties, and “we’d like to see a multiplier in place for those types of individuals.” This would be for MIS, MES and MMS.

At MMS she reported that the FCCLA position involved traveling and preparing for a lot of competitions, and weekends spent traveling, and it is “totally uncompensated.”

“We just feel it’s a respectful response to the huge time commitments these individuals have been putting in.” – Dupree Kelly

Other recommended increased stipend positions included those helping with basketball, the cheerleading sponsors, Jr. Class Sponsor, Play Production, and MHS track/cross country coach.

President Kelly stated that the Personnel Policy Committee had voted on and approved the increases.

Superintendent Harper told the board that he wants to add a Psychological Examiner position and he wants it to have same index as speech therapist.

“It’s one thing to have a class and another to have a program… these are all programs that we are running here.” – Dupree Kelly

Heated discussions began amongst school board members about how much time each individual staff member actually put into their programs, and if it was actually worthy of an additional stipend.

“I don’t think we can always use time as a measure…” “What you’re looking at is we want to be the best we can be as compared to everyone. If our salary schedule isn’t the best, then we need to do something.” – Lee Busby – School Board President

Board member Keith Wells became agitated during the meeting, saying the board was making a rushed decision on the matter if they voted on it immediately.

“We have had copies of this for the past 3 months.” “In order for the people to receive these benefits, we have to move on this tonight.” – Busby

“This [recommended changes] is in line with schools around us and prior to this we were way out of wack.” – Board Member Curt Preston

Harper – “We also tried to be consistent based on the sports and their responsibilities.”

A motion to accept the recommendation from the Personnel Policy Committee was made and passed unanimously, though Keith Wells was reluctant to cast his vote.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2012 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Monticello School News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.