001Could I get a motion, please, to adopt tonight's agenda? >> I move that we adopt tonight's agenda as presented. >> A second. >> All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say, "I." >> I. >> Okay. We are in session. Dr. uh Carlson, salary schedules 101. >> All right. Thank you for uh this opportunity to talk through salary schedules. And I'm gonna get rolling and kind of go through the content here, but give me a signal if you have a question. I I might pause occasionally, but if you have a question, let's just throw it out when it's relevant and timely and we'll jump in and kind of talk through things as as they go if that's fair. Okay. All right. So, um, first thought we'd start with talking a little history of
002salary schedules specific to Lee Summit R7. So prior to 2012 in Lee Summit R7, we had 77 independent salary schedules for different jobs. And um in about 2009, some of us were around for this. A company called Education Management Solutions, commonly referred to as EMS, came in and did an audit and really developed job descriptions uh across the entire district for every job. At that time, I was an assistant principal and activities director at Campbell Middle School. I remember coming to a meeting upstairs and being interviewed by this group about the the functions and duties of the job of assistant principal athletic activities director. They met with representatives from every position in the district, then developed job descriptions. Those job descriptions were then evaluated, compared to market data in the Kansas City metro area for
003school districts and then job descriptions were created and salary schedules were developed in that 2009 2010 around that time. But we couldn't move to those new salary schedules that were developed by that group because we didn't have the money to do it at that time. You'll remember in ' 08 910 what was happening in the world and that affected school districts and school district just didn't have the budget to do anything with the implementation cost but then in 2012 um we did have the budget and at that time team summit worked through and then recommended and the board accepted and moved to four salary schedules uh which is now kind of five with an asterk or four with an asterk but four salary schedules and all employees at that time were transitioned to those new
004salary schedules. The salary schedules were teacher, admin, professional, and support. We now have a fifth ones professional, non-exempt. It's the same salary schedule. We have an exempt and non-exempt version of that salary schedule. And the methodology used when that occurred is um folks were transitioned to the new salary schedules that were now normed and and and adjusted to the market in the Kansas City area by being placed on the step closest to but not less than their current salary and then they were given one step for step movement. So what that did then at that point is now steps and years of experience didn't necessarily match for our employees. Okay. Um and that's significant because I'm going to there's lots of examples of this. I'm going to do one one example to illustrate the point.
005So our teacher salary schedule at this time our teacher salary schedule if you can think of a bell curve where you know it's it's high in the middle and and low on the two ends. Our teacher salary schedule in was a bell curve and had been for years. What I mean by that is at starting teacher pay we were below market. At the middle of the salary schedule, we were significantly above the market in the Kansas area for the job of teacher. Then at the end of the salary schedule, we were again below market um in in compensation for the job of teacher. Okay. So in 2012 the EMS schedule was much flatter. It maintained a more linear at that time competitive nature by design. So with that as folks were transitioned to the step
006closest to but not less than because the board of education team summit nobody wanted anyone to lose money. So everyone transitioned to this new schedule kept their salary placed on a step and then given a step. What that then did was some people, for example, if you were say a fourth year teacher at least some with your bachelor's degree. Well, remember the bell curve fourth year teacher was was below market value and our new salary schedule was more linear here. Well, they got us they got placed on the salary schedule which was probably step one at that time and then given a step. So, they were on step two. So that four-year teacher just moved to step two. So now their steps and their experience don't match up and they're making more money, but they're
007behind um the step of someone else that maybe just got hired with those years of experience. Then in the middle of the salary schedule, remember we were really strong there. So an example of what could happen depending on if you were masters masters plus 15, um you might have say 14 years of experience. So, you're on step 14, but your salary actually put you on step because your salary was much higher than where the schedule was because it was above the market and then you got put on step 19 even though you're on step 14. Okay? And this is all happening in 2012 and everybody in the organization moves around based on this new model. Okay? So fast forward and then um 20134 happens we're moving along giving some step improvements putting some money on
008the base etc. Then there is a desire in 2015 and uh board of education leadership there's a desire to say we are not competitive in starting teacher pay and we want to be number one in the city. Great goal. Well there wasn't the money to necessarily do it. So what was done that year in 2015 is money was placed on the base of the salary schedule but no steps were given. So all budgeted dollars were put on the base and the money that would have been for a step was also put on the base and steps weren't given. That was just for teachers that year. Uh then in 2017 teamly summit got good feedback. People liked it. They did that again in 2017, but that time they did it for all salary schedules. Then in
0092019 it was done a third time for teachers, second time for the other salary schedules where no steps were given and all the money that was budgeted was put on the base of the salary schedule, which for a lot of folks, especially if you were later in the salary schedule, you got a bigger raise than maybe if you had gotten a step. So it just kind of depended on where you were in the salary schedule and how that worked out. Okay. So fast forward then after 2019 and what happens in this time though, we have a board policy that directs us on how we place teachers on the salary schedule. Yes, new hires new to the district teachers in the salary schedule. New hire that might have one year of experience or none or 15
010years. And that board policy says you're going to place them according to this with a cap to how many years you can bring in. Well, what that then happened was you could have two teachers teaching next door to each other teaching the same curriculum with the same years of experience and they could be on steps that are four or five steps apart. And in some instances, um, the new teacher was making quite a bit less than the experienced one that's been here. But in other instances, it was the opposite. A new teacher to the district with the same experience as an established 10-year veteran was making more because they were placed according to those steps. So, Team Lee Summit was getting feedback that was discussed discussed by the board and then it was decided to
011to take that on in Team Lee Summit and that's where phase one and phase two come about. If you ever hear about phase one and phase two, so what phase one and phase two was was an analysis that was done and actually seven phases because the longest we had a person away from their actual step based on experience was seven steps which would mean the three teacher steps from the 2015 17 and 19 and the steps that were uh from 2012 when it was off that person would have been four years off plus the three so now they're seven away but we made it two phases instead of seven because phase one was by far the the biggest group of people. And phases two through seven were about the same dollar amount as phase one.
012They were both about $2 million for a $4 million total project. So we did phase one, then did phase two after that. And then that um then uh brought folks up to speed with um experience matching with two caveats. one, we still had a board policy that limited how many years of experience you could bring in. And then the second caveat is those folks that were above, say they were in year 25, but they were on step 27, we never brought them back or moved them backwards on their step. So those folks are still in our district today where their step is higher than their years of experience, but nobody is lower because we then modified GCBA and board policy. GCBA was modified to do two things. One, let all years of experience be brought
013in when you're a new hireer to the district, which then retroactively applied to all the current employees in the district. So, we gave them an adjustment. It was about 70ish employees. Um, and then we teamly summit decided they want salary schedules to be forward facing and show all the actual steps people are on. So, this document Yes. >> Can you clarify what you meant by forward facing? >> Yeah. So, um I'm going to get into a little bit here, but I'll talk to it now. Um so, we used to have a practice of our salary schedules were built for teachers to be 25 steps and for the other three schedules 18 steps. That made us market competitive and was the right width to be competitive in our market. Um when in 2012 when the these
014schedules were adopted, the advice that was given is to be market competitive and use your dollars wisely. You should not pay above step 18 for these three schedules and step 25 for the teacher schedule. That was the advice that was given. Leaders at that time um did not want to stop people at that point in the schedule. So the decision was um made to go off schedule which meant you got half of the average percentage raise for your employee group and that was added and you were kind of off schedule but no one could see what that was or where that was. a calculation was done for each person to kind of figure out where they were and then sometimes if the salary schedule had a big boost like in 151 17 and 19 and
015steps weren't given people would come back on the salary schedule because the schedule step 25 would catch them. So it created some confusion and then concerns about lack of transparency. So that's why we now have salary schedules that show all steps and we no longer have an off schedule where you can't see it. you do have an off schedule still beyond 25 and 18 and we'll look at that here in a moment. Um, but that's what off schedule meant and why we pivoted to showing it rather than having it in the background. Transparency. You bet. So, this spreadsheet here gets granular and gets into the um history of our salary schedules and what we've done. I'm going to use the most recent year on row 18 to illustrate the point here. So, this is what
016uh Team Lee Summit recommended to the board last spring and that you all approved as a board of education last March uh which was uh the way to code this the teacher schedule um $560 was placed on the teacher base which is about a 1.2% raise to that schedule and then step movement was given for teachers in that column B. In column C, you can see like percentage increases to the schedules were also given along with uh step movement. You can see the approximate cost and know that cost and Dr. Herzog could tell you says it better than I do, but know that cost is always a moving thing for us because people resign. We hire different people depending on their experience. So that's always slightly fluctuating, but we use estimates that get really close.
017Um, so we had $6 million spend last year and then these averages are the averages for each schedule based on the actual people on those schedules. Then you can move back and see kind of what happened, brief notes about what has happened over past years and what the averages were there for the history of salary increases. Going to pause there. Any other questions or anything you want me to dive deeper in with the caveat that the last time I did this presentation was almost two hours. I don't plan to do that tonight, but I can get talking. I know Dr. Buck will will give me the sign to move along. So, >> and just so you know that row 16, that's when the uh levy transfer, the operation levy going up, that's service levy going
018down. After voters voted for that in April 23, that's when it was implemented 2324 school year. Okay. So, um teacher salary schedule design. First thing that guides this is our board policy and those are board policies GCBA and GDBA and uh they're linked there. But these are the policies that talk to us about how that you know per state statute for our board policy we're going to develop salary schedules um and then how those schedules are going to function. So, you can read the details there. Uh on the teacher schedule, it is a little different than others because it does have pay ranges that are designed to correlate with graduate work, whether you're bachelor's, bachelor's, plus 15, masters. For those of you that are not familiar with the education field, when uh Dr. Vilbus and
019I get to offer jobs, we get to take some time to non-educators, say we're hiring an RN to explain how this functions because it is very different than the rest of the world. Um, but we do have teacher salary schedules per statute and per structure and then we build the rest of our schedules off of that. So, here is our salary schedule and I'll tell you that this is all forward facing on our web page. You can find all this information. I'm going to show you from these next two slides here, but this is uh what our salary schedule looks like for teachers today right now for the 2526 school year. Uh you can see if you want to know a starting teacher pays that's range one bachelor's degree step one $44,180. Now if the
020person came to us with a master's degree for their first year of teaching then they would be on range three based on that. So we give them credit for their graduate work um in the field of education that's related to their job. And then typically when we talk about step movement that's the steps moving down the left side one through this year. And that is the step movement that we authorize each year. >> I have a question. >> Yes. >> You said we will give them their education if it's related to their job. So if I come in and I'm brand new and my masters is in administration, but I'm coming into a classroom job, that's not really Are we are we no longer giving credit for that? >> We are giving credit and uh
021board policy GCBA. >> Okay. >> Does allow credit for certain areas related to the field of education. Um and administration is one of them. School counseling is one of them. curriculum is one of them and in the curriculum we'll have things like library media specialist or instructional technology things like that so you'll still get credit or if you have graduate work um related specifically to your content area so the example we will have sometimes is say um a person comes in and they are a math teacher a middle school math teacher and they have an MBA a master's in business administration they would not get credit on our salary schedule for that but if you're a business teacher, you would because that's related to your content area. So, we are very particular and and we're
022intentional about that. And the reason is our teacher salary schedule is the largest investment we make in the school district, especially when you look at the graduate work that equates to salary increases. This is the most the largest investment we make in our school district and our student learning. So, we do try to keep that tied with fidelity to um what are things that are going to benefit our students or education or our school district. Um and it's common that someone may get a counseling degree or a library media degree or an administration degree and maybe never have that job, but it probably still benefits them as a teacher leader in our school district as they become maybe a department chair or maybe a team leader, an elementary grade grade level team uh leader. >>
023Dr. Dr. Carlson, while you get before you go into the next one, just let you know Desi said last year our average teacher here at Lee Summit had 16.3 years of experience and 79.5% of them had an advanced degree, which is way above the state average. So, a masters or more. Um, 79.5% is what the average teacher I mean the percent of teachers that have a master's degree or better. So um I'm gonna so here's look at our salary schedule and it's common you know and actually I'll just jump to the next one here. I do want to talk a little bit about what how salary schedules are designed specifically related to something called indexing. There are two ways teacher salary schedules are often built. One way is you have your table of your salaries
024and then the school district might say we're giving a $100 raise to that salary schedule. And many districts will put $100 on the base and on every cell going through that salary schedule. So the first year teacher and the 28th year teacher with a masters plus 45 all get a $100 raise that year. Okay? And and when I talk about these things I don't want you to think good, bad, right, wrong. I don't intend to come across that way. I will talk about what we do and what other people do. And some of that comes to what is your philosophy on how you're going to compensate your people and how do you want to approach it. Um, so that's a a a salary schedule model that a lot of districts use. We do not. We
025use what is called an indexed schedule. So, uh, Dr. Herzog's team um does a great job of maintaining and managing our salary schedules. And this is a document. I'm going to zoom in a little bit so you can see um you can see our salary schedule as you saw before. But then you see on the right side two columns bachelor's and bachelor's plus 15. Then you see a 1.02 1.02. That is 2% indexing. And for the masters you'll see the same for steps one through five. So for steps one through five on the masters and above we're at 2% as well as the bachelor site. Then you'll see on step six the masters switches to 1.0225. two and a quart%. So then you go to 2 and a half, 2.75. When you get to 16
026to 20, then 21 to 25, you're at 1.03 or 3% indexing. So that is the multiplication in the background of the salary schedule that sets how much the salary will be in each cell. What that means is if you put a $100 on the base of an index schedule and specifically our schedule that flows through to when you get to step 25 for a person on say mast's plus 45 range six or range seven that's actually $180 for them or 189 something like that. If you go further down in the schedule into the 30s or 40s it uh can be upwards of $200. So that $100 flows through and it's more as you get to the end of the schedule because our indexing gradiates on masters and above. You will notice that there are places
027on the bachelor's side. So notice bachelor's column steps 9 through 14. There is no indexing. It stays flat. That's intentional. The desire is we want folks to get their masters, better themselves for our students and for our school district. So we do build a salary schedule that incentivizes that. Once we get to past step 25, step 26 and beyond, we reduce the indexing by half. So then you're at 1.015 or 1 and a.5% indexing. So, and this is when we switched uh to board member Dawson's question from off schedule and having that we decide we're going to make this forward facing transparency is better and so now we go from half the indexing three becomes one and a half% for the rest of the steps. >> Can I ask another question >> please? >> Does
028EMS still build this document for us or do we do this internally now? >> Internally. >> Okay. >> The Chad Herzog team does it. Okay. more specifically. >> And the reason we go to step 43 is we do have an employee on that step. And so every time we have somebody go longer, we'll keep adding a step um using the same multiplier. >> It is a long time. Hey, can I ask another question then? Please. With regards to the masters, has the state backed off of the I mean the incentive is there to get it, but I thought you had x number of years on your certificate and then like they want you to have a mast's and so on. I mean has that changed maybe and maybe it has. I'm sorry. >> Yeah. No,
029it's not required for a teacher um for their certification. For an administrator that is a building administrator, assistant principal or principal, they are required to get their specialist degree. >> Can I ask another question? Yes. >> So the step does not equal years experience. So um how would a teacher figure out what step they would be at? >> It does now equal >> it does. There are a few left that are above their step though because of what happened in 2012. We didn't want to penalize them and pull them down steps. >> Okay. So that's why it doesn't >> but if you have 15 years of experience you're in step 15. >> Okay. So today most people until those people retire >> it will eventually equal step will equal the years >> and no one
030is below that step anymore. They were before phase one and two were done. Um but there were some people below their step but now that is not the case. >> Okay. And there's no differentiation between years experience outside of LSR7 and years experience inside LSR7. They're equal. >> One equals one. >> So yes, for teaching. Yes. So if you come in as a teacher, we actually our human resources team will set a verification form to the school districts they come from and they have to certify their uh prek12 classroom teaching experience. And if it is that experience, then we will give credit for it. But we won't give credit. Well, let me say except for an exception. At Summit Technology Academy, they are doing a great job of hiring industry specialists that are coming in
031and benefiting our kids. Um, those folks will get half credit for their industry experience. Um, for example, to bring in a aerospace or an engineering person or a software person and start them on step one, we're not competitive anyway, so let's not pretend that. because they have 30 years of experience. We'll give them 15 years credit, start them on 16. They're still taking a cut in pay from their industry, but we feel like there is a value to that. >> Okay, we have a medical doctor teaching there. I mean, literally a medical doctor. >> Good questions. All right, so I'm going to show this real quick. And this shows just how we structured and I talked about it. This is the teacher schedule range by position document. You can see where you are with your
032graduate work. That indicates what range you're on and how those ranges are annotated. And I start here because all of this is based off of teacher salary salary schedule structure. So that just goes back to the range three is the masters. Range six is that masters plus 45. That's where you see if you have masters plus 45 or specialist plus 15, you're on that range six. Okay. So here are the salary schedules for our other positions um in the district. Uh first I'll start with the range by position. This shows where different jobs and I'm starting with the admin schedule where different jobs on the administrative schedule show up. So for example, if you want to know where an assistant principal at a middle school is, then you would look here. You'll see that they're
033a 217 day position on range 9. So then you can go to the salary schedule. You can see the steps here now are across the top and then the ranges are down the side. Ranges no longer mean graduate work. They mean job. So then you go to range 927. Step one for that assistant principal is $82,450. Then you see the steps going across. And each job for the admin are located on this schedule. >> Okay. So steps in this case across the x- axis are years now. Okay. >> Yeah. Horizontal. Correct. Um this remember all these schedules I show you from here forward the market competitiveness is step 18. Okay. But again same practice of off schedule which then translated to creating a forward facing schedule. The other thing on these other schedules we're looking
034at now, their indexing is 2% all the way through. It doesn't increase like our teacher salary schedule. So there's 2% indexing all the way through until you get to step 19 and beyond. And then we have half the indexing at 1%. So $100 on the base of this schedule flows through the indexing increases as well. I am next going to go to professional range by position table. So this is our professional jobs in the district. Um so let's use RN registered nurse. You'll see there on the professional exempt SC schedule range 12. So then we will go to this professional exempt salary schedule. Carlson, before you go on, you might explain why this is your asterk, why you have exempt and non-exempt in certain positions. >> We'll do. So, the uh exempt and non-exempt schedules
035for professional folks. Uh looking at this table, you'll see it's annotated on which schedule they're on. That is based on Department of Labor and more specifically the Fair Labor Standards Act and what qualifies a person as an exempt versus a non-exempt employee. uh it has to do with their duties, the work they do, how much they make and there are some levers and guidelines that we follow as a school district that uh in business services and HR we manage to ensure we are compliant with FLSA labor standards act. Um so some positions are exempt all admin all teacher positions and professional exempt positions are all exempt professional non-exempt and support staff positions are all nonexempt. Biggest difference functionally is non-exempt employees time in and time out and once they go over 40 hours we pay
036them overtime at time and a half where an exempt employee does not have uh time requirements. Thank you Dr. So we go to the salary schedule RN is on range 12 and then similarly on this schedule 12 7 and 12 hours a day and then we have 182 182 days and that's your starting salary for that position and then it goes across on steps step 18 2% indexing beyond is 1%. You'll also notice we have a 12 masters. So there are some jobs on the professional schedule you get credit for masters, some you don't. Then there's you have a range 12 244 days. So when you see a range 1282 and a range 122 244, the math in the background is the hourly rate if you boil it down is the same. It's just annualized
037out to the salary for the year. Next, I will go to the support salary schedule. So you can see all the different support positions we have in the district and then you will take uh let's take a common one like uh bus driver bus drivers on the support schedule range 21. So we go to our support salary schedule look at range 21. So they're starting at 2029 an hour and goes across from there. Is that competitive? >> Yeah. Um, we're market competitive. I have some data I'll show you here in a little bit about market and how we look at that. But right now, we are our goal in Team Lee Summit as a district is always to be in the top third with our market and our market is school districts. Like when we
038hire an RN, we're not always competitive to the market to a hospital. Um, but we we do work to be competitive with other schools. And so I want to clarify that's comp we're uh competitive against other school districts, but obviously a bus driver could go drive a truck if they wanted to as well. I don't I wouldn't say we're competitive against what Walmart pays a truck driver because they can make $90,000 a year with just a few years experience. um in the summer of 21 outside of the team lease summer process the board significantly raised um what bus drivers receive to try to get ahead of the shortage we had at that time. >> Yeah, I've my n this is my ninth year in HR and in my time I think we've done four strategic
039moves with the job bus driver when I was first in 2017 bus driver was on range 15 and then 17 then 19 now it's on 21 and doing some other things too. There are times we will need to adjust. Sometimes we'll adjust because we're not with the market. Then sometimes we'll adjust like we had times like right after COVID we had jobs. We were market competitive but we could not find people. So then the board of education said increase if you have if we have a lack of applicants go ahead and increase above the market even further so that we can hopefully get some. Were those decisions back then made through teamly summit and then brought to the board? >> Um yes. Sometimes the board would say we want this to happen and task teamly
040summit with working that problem and then we would bring a recommendation back to the board. >> I think there's been two times I know of that that the board just did it on their own. One was at bus driver one in 2021 and another one was when we used to not have an RN in every building but was hard to get a nurse who is not an RN anymore. Um, so the board made a decision to move the to our ends in every building and and move away from the LPN model because we just couldn't find LPN applicants. Okay, so that's kind of the tour of how uh the the salary schedules work, range, position, and again these are all can be found um on our web page. This is all forward public facing. So
041the next thing to kind of paint a fuller picture is uh one thing that we do in collaboration with business services and we started doing a few years ago with team le summit is creating uh employee heat maps. So this teacher salary schedule heat map shows the number in so it looks like our salary schedule with the graduate work across the top the steps down the left but then you have a number in each cell that tells you in 20 256 today how many employees are in those cells. So bachelor step one we have 20 teachers in that space. Bachelor step two we have 27. And then we've used color to gradiate kind of where there's more and less. So light the darkest green is a one and the darkest red which is 42 and
042then you have green to light green yellowish orange to red in between. So you can see kind of where most of our employees are. Scroll down here to uh step 42 is where our last one is. I have a question on that. So would you say that a majority of those folks in that red and and dark orange area um are folks who have been at LSR7 for many many years or or as a majority the folks who like retired from another district and came over. >> Yeah. So I think it depends on the year. I would say that most of what we hire in our school district is teachers with experience. So, uh, for example, we hired about 140 teachers this year. And you can see about 20 of them were first year teachers
043with their bachelors. Um, we have a salary schedule once we'll show you some comps here coming up. We have a salary schedule that incentivizes folks to come to us at the end of their career. That's where we are above market. Um, and Dr. Buck actually asked me to start tracking some data. Um, we are sometimes at the start of our salary schedule or middle of our salary schedule not able to hire folks. We're just not quite as competitive. Um, but I would say folks fall all the way through the schedule and we do have the phenomenon of the Kansas person. We do have the uh retiree. Um, but really people fall all the way through that schedule. And I wouldn't say there's one spot that the new teacher lands primarily. >> And I would say
044there's two groups of retirees. So if you look at step 31 and lower, >> not all of them are retirees from another state. Not all of them are retired ever. We do have a few in some high needs area where the state has a law that'll be for the next four years, five years >> till 2030 >> to 2030 to allow us to hire retired Missouri teachers to fill those special need positions. Um so there's a list of those positions. So some of those folks actually retired from Lee Summit and are teaching for Lee Summit. Now, when you say you mentioned, you used the word incentive. Did you just mean the way our steps work or that we actually go out there and recruit these retirees? >> Yeah. Design of our salary schedule. >> Yeah.
045And the job I I mean, as a practitioner, I came in with years. It's it is working here is is a is a lot better system than than a lot. And so, it is a a goal for a lot of us to >> to get here. Yeah, but as far as recruitment that goes, you're not targeting retirees. You're I mean anyone from one year to five years to 10 years to 15 years can apply and we don't prefer somebody with 20 plus, right? >> We want We're the best candidate and it doesn't matter how many years. If you're the best candidate, we're going to pick that. We're equal opportunity uh employer. >> Yep. We're recruiting first year teachers to retirees to we're retire we're recruiting everyone. We want them all to apply because from a
046human resources perspective, we want to fish from the most fully stocked pond we can find. And then we're going to we're going to hire the best candidate out of that pond that's going to make a difference for our kids. >> Is is that going to be looked at through the lens of budget in the coming year or two or three? >> I think it always is. Um >> we when we come we you know business services usually gives us a uh a placeholder when we know a position is going to come open. It's of an average salary and sometimes we're going to hire somebody that's going to cost more than that. Sometimes we're going to hire somebody costs less than that. But we use that average for budgeting for unfilled positions when we have the
047budget come forward. >> And I want to go back to something. President are >> Can I add to that for a minute as a teacher? I never once in sat in an interviewing situation for my department where they said, "Uh, we're going to hire this one because this one's going to bring less which is going to be cheaper." Never in the history of my career. That would be appalling. I I we don't can't imagine that that happens. >> It doesn't. >> I guess I just wanted to find out if >> you know looking at some of the financial strains that are coming, would that ever change or are we going to just have a pool of money for new hires? >> I No, I want the best candidate for the kids. So, we're we're all
048about student benefits. So, whoever's going to be the best to help our kids out, that's who we're going to hire. >> Agreed. Agreed. And I want to touch on something uh President Meyer shared that is kind of a source of pride because she talked about you know coming to Lee Summit. You know it's we have great teachers, we have great kids, we have a great community and I remember for years we would talk about we still talk about average kind of stands out here. I mean you you've got to be excellent. People are working hard to make things happen for kids at a high level and lots of niches. So um you know excellence is an expectation and and we hire for that. So I think that's a good point. Sometimes that's a new teacher,
049but sometimes that's someone with great experience that has a master's in mathematics that can then teach IB or college credit type work. All right, I'm going to keep moving right along. Like I said, I could do this for two hours. So, on this spreadsheet, um you'll look at the bottom and you can click on the professional tab. Here's your representation of where our professionals are. You might notice there's a lot of people on six. We've got a couple different jobs on range six, teacher associate, parent educator. You know, range 12 is where those RNs are. So, it kind of gives you an idea as to where those different folks are in our district. Next is support. You can see we have someone that's on step 30 on range nine all the way through. You'll see
050a lot of people on 17. 17 is our range for custodians and pair professionals. So yeah, about 300 people there. You'll also notice that uh most of them there are in their first year with us. That's been a phenomenon that's been been happening ever since co in the last several years. Had a lot of our experienced folks leave and hired a lot of new folks. We're training up. And the last one is our admin salary schedule and the heat map for the admin roles. This one again has the range, but then some of our different admin positions have different work calendarers and that's why you see the different numbers of days questions about that. Okay. So, I've got a a quick activity here we're going to do. Like I mentioned earlier before the meeting, Dr.
051Barger inspired me, so I don't have Plato, but I do have math. Okay. Um, so what I'd like you to do, I'm going to kind of get you all in the mindset of being a a compensation analyst. Okay? You're going to kind of think about because when when we look at salary schedules, we look at a lot of things and uh board member Dawson was touching on some of the things we'll look at and talk about and I'll talk about things like value, things like that. One of the things we'll talk about is width. width of a salary schedule. So, if you have a calculator on your phone, your smartphone, or if you want to hit the calculator button on your uh uh computer, I think you have a you can hit the calculator icon
052above your 10 key and you'll get calculator on your on your desk. What I want you to do is some math on uh determining the width of a salary schedule. So, first, let's uh go ahead and pair up. So, maybe board member Dawson, President Meyers, maybe Dr. Buck, board member Garrett, Dr. Mr. Hy, is that work? So, you guys pair up and work together and collaborate. I'm gonna have you fill out this table. And on this table, I want you to get some data points. First, I want you go to the support salary schedule. I'll put it up here for you. And you can pick any range you want, but why don't we um why don't we do 17 since that's where most of our support folks are, our paras and custodians. And I want
053you to first look at step 18. And what you're going to do for your calculation to determine the width since you're now a compensation analyst, you are going to take the 2524 an hour on step 18. I want you to divide that by the hourly rate at step one, which is 1802. Once you've done that calculation, write that number which will should start with a one if you did it correctly or if I instruct it correctly one point and then some digits and write those down. So step 18 is 2524 an hour divided by step one which is 1802. Yeah, I'm on it. I'm just pulling up my calculator. >> So, so step 18 on range 17 is 2524. >> Divide that $2525.24 by 18.02. Step 18 first >> and then the second column is
054last step of the schedule >> of the of range 17. Yeah. For that would be step 36 which is $30.19. Yeah. My knee score is not great right now. I can tell. All right. So, take your calculator. 25.24 divided by 18.02 because that's your hourly rates. Step 18 and then step one. This is going to give you the width of those two numbers on the salary scale. That sounds exactly right. Well done. 1.40. Well's got 1.40. >> We got 3.4. >> Okay. So what that means? So next year 1.40 in that cell. Now you're going to write 40%. Okay. Now calculate the width of the last step of the schedule per Dr. example a moment ago, which is step 36, which is $30.19 an hour again divided by that same 1802. >> Oh, because they're
055indexing is is 1.02 all the way through, right? Is that why is that the indexing the 02? >> 2% till 18, then it's 1% after. >> Okay. So, so are we dividing by 18.01 then? >> Nope. You're still dividing by 18.02. So you're going to divide the two numbers, the hourly rate at step 36, which is 319. >> Then you're going to divide that by 1802 for step one. Because what this is going to give you is the width from step one to 18 and step one of the schedule in a percentage. And then we're going to discuss it once we have those two numbers. >> Got them. What' you get for the last step? >> 1.67. >> Okay. What numbers did you use? We got 1.67. >> No, >> I got 1.67 as well.
056>> Okay, next to that 1.67, >> write 67%. >> We're going to drop the one, move the decimal. So, your width of your support salary schedule from step one to step 18 is 40%. And from step one to step 36 is 67%. >> I did not communicate well my mistake. >> And what do you use this width information for? >> Yep. That's coming next. So this is the is the percentage that tells you. So for example, we hire a pair of professional on range 17 over the career. the width of compensation of the salary schedule for that job for everyone doing it is 40%. So from 1 to 18 they're going to get a 40% increase in raise just based on the steps of the schedule not including base increase and the width of the
057schedule is 67% all the way to the end of schedule. That number just gives you a number that you can use to evaluate the potential the earning potential for a job. Which then brings you to the next conversation of what do you want your width to be? >> Some places have the width of a job at zero. Everyone makes the same amount no matter your years of experience. Some people have a width that's 100%. Meaning person starting and the person at the end person at the end makes 100% more. they make double. So, what's the right width? And also keep in mind that your width costs money, too. So, and and what's right? And I'm not here to say what's right, wrong, good, bad. There's I think our salary schedules are good and they're built
058well. Um, but it's just a way to look at it. So, for the sake of time, I'm going to accelerate, but you can do this exercise for each salary schedule. Um, I'm going to fast forward so that we can get to kind of comps here. But if you ran that division, you can do this for your own jobs where when you look at what's the rate and some people don't have schedules, they just have ranges that people land on. You can divide the end of the range, the start of the range, see what the width is, and that will tell you something about earning potential over career um for the jobs where you're at. So, what is the right width you want to have? Meaning, how much do you want to value experience as it
059goes on or the starting wage? Okay. So, for the other schedules, because they're 2% at step 18, they're all about 40% width at step 18 for our support, professional, and admin. For last step of schedule, um it depends on how many steps we have. It can range from 55 to 75% depending on how many steps we have in the schedule. I think actually 67 is probably the longest. So, It's a way to look at it and then you can start having conversations. The one that's different is teacher schedule. But look how differently that one's designed, right? So from bachelor's step one to step 25 for teachers at the end, it's 113%. Which makes sense. You can see the numbers to step 25 over there. It's about a little more than double when we go back
060and look, you know, 44 180. We go to step 25 down here. We'll say masters plus 45. It's 91,000. So, it's a little over double. So, it's a little over 100% width. If you go from step one to step 43, it's like 186% width. So, but we don't have many people down there. So, is step 25, step 30, what's your width, and how does it compare? And this schedule's different because you're moving across um based on your graduate work. So, it's one way to look at um salary schedules and and how they're going to compensate people over time. And there's a cost to that. Um when you have a wider schedule, there's going to be more cost because more people are going to be distributed or less cost on the front end. for us. When
061you look at the cost of our schedule, when you do a step for all our entire district, um for the next school year, it's going to be about $4.2 million about. We can tell you it won't be 4.2 because people are retiring. We're going to hire new people and that's happening every day right now. So, we can't give an actual number until we get into the fall when people are actually here. And then the next thing we talk about, that's the cost of step movement. The next thing we talk about is what does a $100 to the base mean and how much does that cost? So if we did $100 to the base of the teacher salary schedule, that costs about $249,000. And then if we did the like percentage increase to the other schedules,
062you can see the cost there. total of $100 to the base for all salary schedules with an equal percentage is 405,000. >> Could I ask a question or would you rather this come later? No. >> So, in the beginning of the presentation where we looked at the chart that had the history of the salary schedules in general, it showed $6 million increase for this year. And so the the so the four million approximately is the teacher scale is how I understood that. The other two million is the other scales >> close. So the four million was um step movement >> for all four schedules >> and then the 2 million was the money that we increased the base with. >> Okay. Okay. Okay. I got hung up on that. And then I have one other
063question about the $100. Why why the $100? Uh >> it's scalable math. So when team Lee Summit's saying, "Okay, what if we have this much?" They just scale hundred times if they want to look what $300 costs. It's just easy to multiply. >> Yeah. Moves decimal points around. So it's a if we did $1,000 and we can just move the decimal point for both the cost and then the impact on the schedule. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> So when >> for just the teacher schedule, $400 would be about a million. Correct. You got it. So when you over the summer when you probably get the highest turnover I would guess. Um do you have like a pool of money set aside for those hires in in all the five different groups? >> That's
064what we do that placeholder for the average in that range. We have a placeholder by position. Um so a lot of them we've already hired and the uh certified staff. We know that when the budget comes to you. really more the support staff and professional staff that come and go all year long. Um whereas teachers and administrators tend to be a hiring season in the spring. >> So when um so when we see a comment in context of budget things that says we are not going to backfill A, B, and C so that we can save money then that pool gets smaller for the the hires. Right. >> Correct. Okay. So this building here had over a half a million dollar reduction in staff. Um so that is now taken out of the budget. >>
065Okay. So it's it's not in the current the 2025 20226 budget. >> There might have been a couple of those positions still in because they happened after budget was approved. Um I think at least one of them may be but vast majority were already taken out before the budget was approved. Yes. >> Thanks. Any other questions on on how the budget interacts with the salaries and our heat maps and our schedules? Um, so a couple other things we one thing we do in teamly summit a lot and we look at a lot is comps comparisons uh with our market. So this document is one that actually NEA produces for us each year. Um this one is an example. It gives you um teacher salary schedules for the Kansas City area. This is for the last
066school year 202425. Um this one has a lot of information for you, but uh this page is the first one we look at. So that first column where you see bachelor's step one beginning district, it has Kansas City 41850 at the top. That's your starting teacher pay column. And if you look there, you'll see last year Lee Summit was number nine at 43,620. and you can see where the other school districts work. What NEA does here then is picks two other points. One is master step 10. So think that range three moved over a couple ranges because you got your master's degree and then you're in your 10th year. This is where salaries are for that group. And here's where Lee Summit is 10 right now or last year. And then they ask for M's
067plus. Say you got your mast's plus the end of where you could go not doctorate but mast's plus. So for us that would be range six mast's plus 45 and then uh at the end of that schedule which for us is step 43 and then there's a salary for that. So once we get there we're number one. Now some districts are showing you know step 34 and they're going beyond their traditional 22 or 30. Um, some districts truly stop at the end of their schedule, some districts do the off-schedule practice, but this is the best applesto apples comparison we can get for the teacher side. Then in the additional information, you see, you know, doctorate, national board certification, those types of add on or where the salary schedule goes there. >> So, you said that
068this came from the NEA. Where um where do we gather the data for the other the professionals and support and all that? >> Good question. So that um I'm going to show you this document. >> Can I ask a question about the teacher one before we leave it? >> Please. >> How do we budget for the national board uh certification for that extra stipen? Where does that come from? H how do we is that >> it's about uh 12 10 to 15 teachers. So it's not a lot and we just um maintain the budget each year for that. Then if you know if we have someone add on I'll be can the national board certification is a great certificate. It is a robust process. Many would describe it like getting your doctor, right? It is
069a phenomenal rigorous rigorous process and is very clear that when a teacher has gone through that there's a value to student learning. >> Um we don't have a lot of them. Um but we we basically budget and check probably speak better but we basically budget for how many we have that year and then with a little wiggle room for increase or decrease. >> But there's no uh funding that follows that. There's no >> Okay. >> It's from our operation. >> I just wanted to clarify that. Yeah. Thank you. And there's no requirement to give extra on your salary schedule for it, but we choose to do so. >> Yeah. And most districts do. >> Um, so I'll just scroll down real quick. There's a lot of other data here. Here's some um other uh you
070know, number of days on the salary schedule for teachers um on their work calendar and what they get paid. You know, you can compare how many folks are working. you know, like we're 182. Um, and then how many other days um there are for students, we have 170 and some for teachers. The next one starts to get into things like extra compensation and then more specifically daily rate. So, it takes that work calendar to the salary and creates a daily rate and then reranks. Then the last one's an interesting one. It does career earnings, what you'll make after 10 years in that district with a predescribed uh plot through the schedule after 20 years and then after 30 years in the district and then the max 30 years. That gives you an idea as to
071what you would look like over your career in that district over time. Um, before we leave this, I will will say I just and I just received it, so I haven't had a chance to spend much time with it, but I did just get the uh um NEA salary comps for the current school year. And it it does look like even with the the commitment we made to our schedule, it looks like we went from nine for step one to new teacher pay to 13 in the metro. So, we actually lost some ground even with the money we put on the schedule. Um, master step 10, we've moved from 10 to 12, but we are still number one at the end of the teacher slaughter schedule. So, we'll do we'll I have not I like
072I said, I just got that. I haven't even shared it with teamly summit yet. So, we'll dig into that when we start doing salary comps here in the winter with uh with teamly summit. Then this uh to the question about other jobs. Here's uh other jobs and data we have over the years. And uh going back to the 20112 school year, FY12. And uh this map shows you something a little different than the heat map. Green is when we're in the top third. Yellow is when the position is in the middle third and red is when the job is in the bottom third. And then you can look at rankings and then they're tabulated on the right side. You can scroll through and look at jobs and some years it's blank and sometimes it is
073hard. A lot of different districts will call things different things and we have to kind of work on that. Sometimes we'll learn well this was actually called this and we we really work but custo some of them are pretty reliable custodian parah bus driver are more reliable. And then at the bottom here, there are some calculations and some just uh placeholders where how many of our jobs were in the green, how many in the yellow, how many in the red, and then by percentage. So you can see in FY24, we were we were really successful in moving a lot of our positions out of the red because we had 25% of our jobs in the red in FY23 and we were bumped that up to 8.82 and you can see that was the levy increase
074from the debt levy transfer that year. that really helped us gain ground. But the thing we have to remember whether teacher salary or any of the jobs on this spreadsheet, every district is making moves trying to be competitive with the budget they have available. And sometimes they'll go to the voters to increase like Park Hill did last year. Park Hill was able to move to number one and starting teacher pay this year and made a huge move to $48,525. Um, so I can't remember where they were before, but I think they moved up like 10 slots or they they were fifth. Okay. >> So, is team Le summit going to be focusing on those reds in fiscal year 25? Is that kind of the thing? >> Yeah, every year. Every year we talk about them.
075Um, and I I was on teamly summit years ago when I was a principal. You know, some years we don't have much budget to do much to get competitive or move jobs out of the red. Other years we do. Um and you have to be careful because sometimes you put money in this spot well then other people are catching up. So you so teamly summit will often try to do both try to give raises to all but then target specific areas that that need to be more market competitive because we just don't we don't want to there are jobs where we will lose people to other districts because they can make more money or they'll they'll not say yes to our job. >> And Dr. Carlson I want to correct myself. You were right. Park
076Hill was ranked 11th for beginning teacher salary last year at 43,210 when they passed their levy to increase their pay to 48,500. They're now number one. They've increased 10 spots. So I was looking at the overall if you spent 30 years here they're fifth, but last year but you're right. They were 11th with beginning salary last year. >> Yeah, big move. >> All right, just about an hour. So questions, things you'd like to talk more about, dig deeper with >> looking forward to hearing how teamly summit goes. >> Teamly someone will be digging into this data and then at the board like last year can expect um information to come throughout throughout the year and then more specifically in the March April timeline when uh we do salary recommendations from teamly summit. Um you know
077I know that the board done a made a proclamation to resolution. Thank you for Prop C. So, um what we're planning to do props goes on the ballot or when then we will uh talk about like we did with the debt levy transfers, how we're strategizing that. I just want to let you know as a board that um if Prop C measure passes, we're basically going to make an option A and an option B and then we will probably we have to do a special session after the election to where depending on if the prop C passes or not. Then at that point we would um operationalize option A or option B based on the budget that would be available for >> and the reason why we'll need a special session is because we typically
078approve salary schedules in the month of March but we won't know the outcome of an April election but we have to get teacher contracts out by April 15th. So between that election and April 15th, if it passed, we would have to have a special election to approve a salary schedule that included those dollars. Um if it doesn't pass, then we could have done it in March, but we won't know that in March. >> So just to be clear, then we would be voting before the election. >> You'll vote afterwards on both. >> So the what basically what teamly summit's going to ceue up two recommendations, one if it fails, one if it passes >> and after the election within a week because we have to have time to certify the election too. um within a
079week then we'll have a special session and whichever one is the appropriate one then would come forward to the board. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you, Dr. Carlson. Appreciate it. Anybody else? >> Okay. >> Anything else? >> All right. I think that concludes our work session and we will move upstairs. Thank you.