By T. Scott Boatright
Lincoln Parish Schools employees, including substitute teachers, will be seeing a monthly pay increase for the 2024-25 academic year.
That comes after a motion passed by the Lincoln Parish School Board during a special-called meeting held Thursday at the Lincoln Parish Schools Central Office.
In a 5-4 vote with one abstention, the LPSB voted to boost monthly paychecks by reducing amounts of 13th and 14th bonus checks distributed each November and May.
That vote will boost certified employees’ monthly checks by around $500 per month with uncertified support staff receiving an additional $250 each month.
That recommendation came from Huntsville, Alabama-based LEAN Frog Consulting, a firm that the LPSB hired to review its pay system and in a move to try and ensure that pay for parish employees is competitive with other schools in the region.
The funds for supplemental paychecks come from parish sales taxes. The monthly pay increases will cut what are known as 13th and 14th paychecks approximately in half while not affecting overall annual pay.
Pay for substitute teachers will increase from $85 to $100 per day for those holding an undergraduate degree and from $75 per day for those who haven’t completed an undergrad degree to $90 for each day worked.
As far as reducing supplement checks to add additional monthly pay to help employees battle ongoing economic inflation, Lincoln Parish Schools Superintendent Ricky Durrett told the LPSB that a polling of teachers in the system indicated a near 50/50 split between employees that wanted the increased monthly pay with reduced supplemental checks and those who wanted to stand pat and keep the supplemental checks as they were.
Durrett told the board that the school system can work with local financial institutions to work out a way for those in favor of the bigger November and May supplemental checks to still make that happen under the newly adopted system.
“We can have vacation accounts or Christmas accounts, we can set it up to go into saving accounts for you to make that happen,” Durrett said.
Those voting in favor of accepting LEAN Frog Chief of Staff/Lead Consultant Chasitie White’s recommendation of spreading out the supplemental pay into the monthly checks were LPSB members Donna Doss, Gregg Phillips. Otha Anders, George Mack and Danny Hancock while voting to keep the twice-yearly supplemental paychecks were David Ferguson, Clark Canterbury, Lynda Henderson and Danielle Williams with Hunter Smith deciding to abstain his vote.
The LPSB also voted to approve updated job descriptions and pay rates to meet requirements with a new state law, Act 311 of the 2024 legislative session.
That act requires the school system to pay teachers and administrators at least $30 an hour for any duties not included in their job description, hence the updating of those descriptions.
The changes made Thursday do not cover the full extent of what LEAN Frog researched and recommended for Lincoln Parish schools.
Those recommendations will be presented next week in another LPJ article.
Thursday’s special meeting was called because the state Legislature requires compliance with Act 311 by Sunday.
