At the regular meeting of the Haywood County Schools Board of Education on May 14, 2018, the Board voted to reinstate pay steps for over three hundred fifty (350) employees.  The pay steps were frozen during the 2005-06 school year.  The frozen pay steps resulted in numerous situations in which new employees made the same salary as employees with ten or more years of experience in the same job.  Over time we began losing experienced employees who went to other school systems or into the private sector.

The frozen pay steps primarily impacted employees who do not hold a teaching license as part of their job requirements.  Job classifications returning to a pay step scale include clerical, teacher assistants, transportation, custodians, child nutrition and program directors.  The cost of putting employees on the proper pay-step scale according to their years of experience, is approximately $350,474.  This is a sustainable plan that addresses problems related to employees leaving and employee morale.

The school system began working with School Efficiency Consultants (SEC) in 2014 to improve efficiency in school business operations.  In May of 2017, the Board approved using SEC to study employee pay as it relates to neighboring school systems, local county government and similar school systems in North Carolina.  The reinstatement of pay steps for employees who have been frozen and the Board’s recent increase in the local teacher supplement are designed to make the school system more competitive with neighboring school systems and private employers with like jobs.

“On behalf of our employees, I want to thank the Board of Education as well as several of our program directors for their work to address problems with employee pay,” said, Bill Nolte.  “Their work should allow us to keep more of our experienced employees.  That should be very helpful in maintaining our history of high performance.”

Contact:  Dr. Bill Nolte