Vote on school pay raises postponed

Plans to give a pay raise to all Shawano School District employees were put on hold after Shawano School Board members tried to alter administrative recommendations on April 18.

The recommended route was to give teachers, support staff and administrators a 4.7% boost, which was expected to cost the district about $725,000. Business manager Josh Swanson recommended the board consider two different ways to distribute that raise — one was a straight salary increase, while the other was a 2.7% increase in the base wage and the rest coming from an increased stipend.

The 4.7% pay increase was recommended based on the rate of inflation established in January, although inflation has jumped to 8.54% since then. The pay raise recommendation comes on the heels of the public announcement that the neighboring Clintonville School District was giving salaried staff a 5.2% raise and hourly staff a 4% raise.

“Obviously, a lot of surrounding school districts are using that 4.7% as a benchmark,” Swanson said.

Swanson warned that the pay increase, while not impacting next year’s budget, is expected to cause a shortfall in the district’s 2023-24 budget. He noted that the district is using Emergency and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief funding to help plug up the remainder of a $2 million budget gap in the 2022-23 budget, but the funding should not be expected to clear up the red ink the following year.

“We could be looking at an additional $1.3 million to $2 million in a deficit in two years,” Swanson said, noting the estimates were conservative. “The further out we go, the more unpredictable things become.”

Board president Michael Sleeper pointed out that the district is operating under the state’s current biennial budget, which provided a zero increase in per-pupil funding, but 2023 will be the next time the Wisconsin Legislature works on the budget, so the financial outlook could be very different.

“It’s still in discussions whether we do or don’t go out for an operations referendum,” Sleeper said. “A year from now, we would know if that passed or not.”

Board member James Davel, who sits on the finance committee that recommended the raise, agreed that there were some unknown variables for the future that could impact how the district gives pay increases, but he said the proposal before the board was “warranted.”

However, it quickly became evident that board members didn’t want to provide an across-the-board raise for all categories of employees.

Board member Mike Musolff noted that, working on the last budget, it was revealed that support staff pay was “deficient,” so he recommended that those employees receive an additional 2% increase, bringing their raise to 6.7% and garnering applause from the standing-room-only crowd. When asked what the financial impact would be, Swanson said he didn’t have the figures, which ultimately led the board to vote to postpone the decision to its May 2 meeting.

It was also unclear what the financial impact would be if the board opted not to give administrators a raise at all. Board member Mart Grams made that recommendation, suggesting that the financial quagmire the district is in that has resulted in the district having to cut staff positions is not something the board should be rewarding.

“Knowing that we’ve cut staff, and that we’re debating to cut more, I don’t think the administration should get a raise,” Grams said. “They have less people to administer. If there’s less kids, we have less teachers. If we have less teachers, we need less administrators.”

Grams added that the salary freeze for administrators was the minimum that should be done and went on to suggest that a 5% pay cut would be warranted.

“They’re not in the classroom,” Grams said.

Board member Chris Gull noted that, even though he couldn’t vote on the pay increase because of a conflict of interest due to being related to a staff member, he didn’t think the 4.7% raise was enough.

“I think teachers are vastly underpaid, and I wish we could do more,” Gull said.

Gull also expressed pessimism that an operational referendum would pass due to “large, well-funded members of the community” possibly coming out against it. He said that if a referendum failed, instead of surgical cuts the board has had to make to downsize its staff structure, it could be looking at harsher cuts.

Megan Pyaskowit, a community member and parent in the district as well as a substitute teacher, said she was pleased to see the raise being considered, which was much higher than the 1.23% salary increase approved by the board the previous year. However, she did not feel administrators should be included since they received an additional 4% raise in the last two years that teachers and support staff did not receive.

“I would like to recommend administrators receive only a 0.7% pay raise so that it is equal with the raise all the other employees received,” Pyaskowit said. “I was not given the 1.23% pay raise at the start of the school year, and the reason I was given was that the district has to be very careful with its money. I have a salary of $31,500. Apparently, $387 was too much for the district.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com