In addition to raises for all regular employees – with the state funding the raises for full-time teachers – the Bulloch County Board of Education is now eying raises for substitute teachers and other subs.
Along with $165,000 for substitutes’ raises, $51,600 for one more school-assigned sheriff’s deputy was added to the fiscal 2020 budget in the update Chief Financial Officer Troy Brown gave Thursday evening.
Two weeks earlier, when he presented the board a $101.55 million general fund budget that included raises for all regular employees, District 5 board member Glennera Martin suggested that substitutes should also be included.
Information Brown gathered from seven other counties shows that Bulloch’s average pay for substitute teachers with teaching certificates is lower than the multi-county average. But the complete picture is more complex.
“We did do an analysis of our surrounding counties during these past two weeks … and we saw that we were slightly below the average,” Brown said. “So for that, what I would like to recommend is an average increase of ($12) per day, and I am saying ‘average,’ because there are different classifications that we have of substitutes.”
That was the average of raises suggested for all kinds of substitutes, from bus monitors to school nurses, as well as teachers.
Counties compared
Bulloch County’s current pay for substitute teachers with teaching certificates is $70 a day, the same as Jenkins and Screven counties’. But certified teacher subs are paid $75 a day in Candler and Emanuel counties, $90 in Evans County, $100 in Bryan County and $125 in Effingham County, according to Brown’s chart.
So, the average pay for substitutes with teaching certificates in the other seven counties is $86.43, or $80 with Effingham County’s higher rate thrown out as an anomaly, Brown noted.
For substitute teachers without certificates, Bulloch County’s current $60 daily pay is slightly higher than the $59.43 composite average from the other seven counties.
Except for Candler, which also has one $60 rate for noncertified subs, the other counties pay those with college degrees more than those with only a high school diploma or GED, Brown’s chart indicates. Tossing out Jenkins County’s rates of $40 for high school diploma-only subs and $60 for uncertified college-degreed subs as the low end, Bulloch’s $60 single rate is less than a modified $62.67 average of the other counties.
For extended service, meaning 10 or more days in the same assignment, Bulloch County currently pays certified substitute teachers $85 a day. But the average rate is $107.91 in the other counties, or $94.17 excluding Bryan County, which bases long-term substitute pay on regular teacher pay at different certification levels.
New daily pay rates Brown suggested would be $85 for certified substitute teachers, a $15 increase, and $70 for substitute teachers without certificates, a $10 increase. For extended service, certified substitute teachers would receive $100 a day, a $15 increase, and noncertified substitute teachers would get $80 a day, a $12 increase.
All subs included
Substitute paraprofessionals, clerical workers, custodians and school bus drivers would get $70 a day, a $10 increase. Substitute bus monitors would also get a $10 increase, to $46.25 a day.
For other school roles, subs are paid hourly wages. School food service substitutes would get a $1.50 increase, to $8.75 an hour. Substitute school nurses’ hourly rates would increase to $17 for LPNs and $24 for RNs.
In other words, every classification of substitute would get a boost in pay under the latest draft of the school system’s budget for fiscal year 2020, which begins this July 1.
District 3 board member Stuart Tedders, Ph.D., asked Brown to provide the area’s median substitute salaries – the middle of the range instead of the averages – by the next meeting.
Half of SRO cost
The other addition since the previous meeting, $51,600 for a school resource officer, is half the projected cost for a Bulloch County Sheriff’s officer employed in that role for a year, said Superintendent of Schools Charles Wilson. The total includes the cost of equipping a deputy, plus the salary and benefits.
With this funding, Wilson is holding Sheriff Noel Brown to a commitment to add one resource officer each year, pending county commissioners’ approval of his budget.
“He and I have talked, and he’s going to propose that,” Wilson said. “So we have this in our budget so if his comes through we’ll have our part to match it.”
That would will bring the total to six deputies serving as SROs, with some serving two neighboring schools. The Statesboro Police Department provides two officers for Statesboro High School. After this addition, more than half of the 15 schools would be served by a total of eight resource officers from the two departments.
Growing budget
The previously reported $400 increase in local pay supplement for every fulltime employee with a teaching certificate had already been included in the suggested budget, as had their state-funded $3,000 raises.
The $1 million projected cost of a local 7 percent raise in base pay for fulltime support personnel such as paraprofessionals, custodians and food service workers, and hourly pay boosts for regular bus drivers and monitors, had also been included.
At that point, the suggested general fund budget had shown a relatively tiny net income of $20,012 over the $101.55 million in expected revenue. But after the resource officer cost and substitutes’ raises were added, the budget proposal shows $101.77 million in total spending, exceeding revenue by $216,512.
However, that would still leave the school system a fund balance of $18.3 million, exceeding the state’s traditional guideline of a 15 percent ending balance. For fiscal 2020, CFO Brown has proposed designating $1.4 million, left over from funds assigned to specific schools and not spent, as a formal reserve, leaving a $16.9 million unreserved balance. Even that would still be 16 percent of planned spending.
Wilson is slated to recommend a budget for tentative approval May 9. No vote has been taken on it at this point. But board members approached after Thursday’s meeting expressed support for the budget presented so far, including the raises.
“We’re very excited about that,” said District 4 member April Newkirk. “Our teachers definitely need that raise.”
Tedders said the addition of another resource officer “seems to be right on target with what we’ve wanted to do, what we’ve anticipated, in terms of school safety.”
Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.