City BOE approves staff raise

Lenoir City Board of Education on Thursday approved a 2% raise for staff.

The raise, which is retroactive to July 1, includes Director of Schools Jeanne Barker.

McNish and school board member Matthew Coleman motioned and seconded, respectively, to approve the raise. The vote passed 4-0 in favor. Bobby Johnson Sr., school board member, was absent.

Glenn McNish, school board member, said he’s “excited” the board can do this for district staff.

Rick Chadwick, school board member, said revenues were higher than anticipated which is why the raise is able to happen.

“We didn’t know the state of the economy with COVID and how that was going to affect us,” Mitch Ledbetter, school board member, said. “Financially, we’re better than what we anticipated. I know it’s been a difficult year. Administrators, you know, you’ve all worked tirelessly around the clock, so thank you, and hopefully it will help a little bit anyways.”

During initial budget talks, the board considered a 1% raise totaling $148,873 before Gov. Bill Lee cut the state’s 2% salary increase for education. Lenoir City Schools pays above the state minimum, so the 2% state increase translated to a 1% increase for district employees, Barker said.

Although the 1% raise had been cut, the board approved a one-time 1% bonus to be paid out from reserves to employees in December. With the raise, Chadwick said the 1% bonus would no longer be viable.

“The 1% bonus now you won’t be getting it in December,” Chadwick said. “I believe you’d rather have the 2% (raise) because it’ll help you on your retirement and your extra insurance and all that stuff, and I see some heads nodding. So thank you guys very much.”

Barker thanked the board on behalf of the entire school district.

“This is a vote of confidence and understanding in the time of unusual circumstances that we are in now,” Barker said. “But I also want to recognize that back in spring when we had our budget talks, I am very pleased that we have a school board that is fiscally responsible. We didn’t know what was coming, and you took the fiscally responsible stance in making sure that we were ready to go into the next school year, that we had everything we needed to open schools. That’s where the focus was. Now we have the opportunity to come back, and as we said during budget time, maybe we could come back and look at our financial situation after we knew a little bit more about it. Then different decisions could be made, and you’ve done that.”

The 2% raise will add $158,000 to the preexisting $148,873 approved by the board, Barker said.

“They’ll start getting the 2% in their next check which will be at the end of November,” Barker said. “Then what we’ll do is just run an extra check that will go back and figure what they missed, and so they’ll get a lump sum for that, and then the rest of the year, the regular amount that it would’ve been.”