BENTONVILLE -- A new pay structure for the School District's administrators will allow them to earn higher salaries as they accumulate experience in their positions.
The administrative salary schedule also will correct salary inequities among administrators and will help the district attract and retain good employees, according to Dena Ross, the district's chief operating officer.
Range change
The Bentonville School District is upgrading the salary range for its deputy superintendent, a position that is new to the district this year.
The range originally was $109,786 to $139,953. Debbie Jones was hired for the job at $125,000, which Chief Operating Officer Dena Ross said is “not appropriate” for the duties associated with the job. Comparable employees in local districts earn between $127,303 and $160,000, Ross said.
Bentonville will add $5,000 to both the low and high ends of its salary range for the position.
Source: Staff report
The School Board approved the salary schedule last week by a 6-0 vote. The plan, which takes effect Friday, initially will cost the district about $151,000 to get all administrators set in their proper places on the schedule.
There also will be an annual cost of about $70,000 as administrators qualify for higher salaries, Ross said.
Ross, while introducing the concept to the board at its meeting June 6, cited research out of the University of Texas at Dallas that found effective administrative leadership equals two to seven months of value-added achievement for students.
"If that's what we want, and that's what we expect, then we need to be willing to do what it takes to retain some of our good people. Administrators are important," she said.
The district has salary schedules for teachers and classified workers that allow them built-in raises over time. Administrators didn't have a schedule, however, and therefore had no way of earning more money unless the board approved an across-the-board pay raise for them.
"We pay reasonably well at the low end of experience. We pay poorly at the high level of experience," Ross said.
For example, the average daily rate of pay for a Bentonville elementary or middle school principal with 15 years of experience is $380 -- $51 less than the average paid by the Fayetteville, Rogers and Springdale districts for someone with the same experience, according to statistics Ross provided.
The district has established ranges of pay for each kind of administrator, but there was no defined method for a superintendent to place an administrator on that range upon hiring him or her.
The new salary schedule will bring some consistency to that process, Ross said.
Each job will continue to have a salary range associated with it, but that range will be divided into five subranges that correspond with a level of experience.
So an elementary principal with fewer than five years of experience will be eligible to make between $81,261 and $86,408. Upon reaching five years of experience, that principal will be paid between $87,695 and $92,842, depending on that person's level of education and other related achievements.
Salary assignments typically will be made in the center of each range. Those whose pay is currently above their designated range will remain frozen until they accumulate enough years to enter a higher range or the board issues a percentage raise to all administrators.
Board member Grant Lightle said the new salary structure is overdue but stressed it's still important the district not get carried away when assigning a salary to a new administrator.
"We've got to have the discipline not to let some people get into the high end of the range because we really want them," Lightle said. "If they don't have a doctorate or master's or whatever it is, they either take the mid-range (salary) or they don't."
He also suggested finding a way to credit administrators for any time they spent working as teachers, which the new structure doesn't incorporate.
"That's going to cost more, but I think that experience is worth something, too," Lightle said Monday.
NW News on 06/27/2016