Daniel Prince
May 9, 2023
Tax increase, professional pay, and athletic budget among the issues to be resolved
The Union County Board of School Trustees met for a budget workshop Monday night. Four questions remain unresolved following the meeting. The first is how much of a tax increase will the board approve. Tax millage increases are based on the consumer price index plus population growth. For Union County, millage can increase by 10.2 mills this year. The district is also allowed to go back one year and raise millage by last year’s allowable increase if they didn’t increase the tax that year. Last year’s allowable tax increase was 6 mills. The district last raised taxes in 2018, and then it was a total of 3 mills. This year, they could raise it by an overall total of 16.2 mills, which Finance Director Linda Griffin said would generate a total of $683,000. The proposed budget only includes a 10.2 mill increase, which would generate $438,000 for the district. As reported previously, the district wants to use the additional revenue to increase the number of steps on the teacher pay scale from 24 years to 26 years, thereby giving veteran teachers an incentive to stay in the district longer. The increase would also go to pay for the step increases for support staff and the state-mandated 25% increase in bus driver pay. Griffin said the state will likely kick in some money for that, but how much won’t be known until mid-summer. All district employees will see an increase of some amount. The state is mandating a $2500 raise for teachers, which will cost the district $612,000. The support staff increases will cost $145,000, and the bus driver increase will cost $171,000. All other employees will receive a 3% increase, which will cost $82,000. In addition, state retirement is going up by 1% and health insurance is going up 3.7%.
A second unanswered question is if the board will change the way that professionals coming from the workforce to teach at the Career and Technology Center are paid. Currently, someone coming in from the workforce enters the pay scale with 0 years of experience, though they can be bumped to a master’s degree pay scale if the state determines that their work experience merits it. Some other school districts use a formula to determine how much their prior professional experience is worth and can start them higher up on the pay scale, with some number of years of experience rather than starting them at the bottom. Board member Mark Ivey advocated for compensating them for their experience, stating that it is hard to recruit when there is so much of a discrepancy between what the professional can get in private industry vs. what the school district can pay. Superintendent Joey Haney stated that if the district were to go with a funding formula, it would cost a total of an additional $30,000 for four employees next year. That number would change year to year based on the number of employees affected and their level of experience coming in. No decision was made at the workshop, and the board is likely to revisit the matter in an executive session at their next meeting.
The two other unresolved questions are what to do with the athletic training budget, as the cost of that contract is increasing by 433% in the coming year, and how much to fund the athletic budget. Both were matters of extensive discussion at last night’s meeting, and we’ll cover them in tomorrow’s newscast.