FAYETTEVILLE -- The Fayetteville School Board on Thursday made several changes to the way teachers who work beyond the normal school day are paid.
Department heads, teachers who oversee extracurricular activities such as band, drama and quiz bowl and athletic coaches receive a "stipend" for the extra hours they work.
High School parking
Assistant Principal Bobby Smith presented a plan Thursday for traffic at Fayetteville High School during the 2015-16 school year. Hundreds of freshmen will be enrolled at the school for the first time.
According to the plan, no parent pickup or drop-off will be allowed along Bulldog Boulevard. The street will be reserved for bus loading and unloading.
Freshmen and sophomore pickup will be in parking lots on the west and southwest ends of the campus along Stadium Drive. The southeast lot, near Buchanan Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard will be used for junior and senior pickup. The lots will be reserved during the school day for faculty and staff.
Students will park on the school’s north side, near Harmon Stadium and Bulldog Field.
The plan will be up for approval at the School Board’s May 28 meeting.
Source: Staff report
"(The stipends are) for additional duties a teacher performs outside their traditional teaching contract," Greg Mones, district human resources director, explained before Thursday's meeting.
A junior high band director gets a $1,500 annual stipend, for example, plus 15 days of extra pay at his base salary rate.
The high school's 10 department chairmen each receive a $1,750 stipend, plus two days of extra pay.
Those amounts won't change in the 2015-16 school year, but several other stipends are being added or eliminated.
District officials plan to fill a vacant high school assistant principal position, for example, with two teachers serving as part-time deans of students.
The dean of students position carries a $10,000 stipend with 10 days of extra pay.
Fourteen archery club advisers will be paid a $250 stipend in district elementary, middle and junior high schools.
On the athletic side of things, stipends are moving from a fixed dollar amount to a percentage of coaches' base pay.
The head high school football and basketball coaches will be paid 130 percent to 160 percent of their base pay, for example, while assistants, freshmen coaches and junior high coaches will receive 105 percent to 130 percent of their base pay.
Superintendent Paul Hewitt said the change was precipitated by the addition of freshmen -- and new freshmen coaches -- at Fayetteville High School next year. It will also give the School District greater flexibility in offering new coaches more or less pay depending on their experience, Hewitt added.
Mones said he would work with Steve Janski, Fayetteville athletic director, in the coming weeks to set specific stipends for each of the athletic positions. He emphasized he didn't expect the new stipend structure to add to the School District's bottom line.
Also on Thursday, School Board members discussed salary changes for district support staff, such as custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and classroom aides, but they held off on a decision until next month's meeting.
As proposed, the changes would increase a custodian's minimum wage to $11.25 per hour from $10.60 per hour, to put the position more on par with counterparts in the Springdale and Rogers school districts.
Cafeteria workers and classroom aides would also see their starting salary increase, whereas the average beginning wage for bus drivers would decrease slightly.
Board member Steve Percival said he wanted to keep support staff wages competitive with Springdale and Rogers. But, he noted, Fayetteville's custodians are paid more on average than custodians with the Prairie Grove, Greenland and Elkins school districts.
"Everyone should get what the competition is paying, but I don't think we should be paying more than we need to," Percival said.
NW News on 04/24/2015