A compensation study for the School District of Lee County will help in TALC negotiations this year.

The study, which began in November 2023, looked at the employee database, salary schedule, job descriptions, organizational chart, personnel policies, and procedures.

Evergreen Project Manager Stasey Whichel said the best practice for school districts is typically between 40 to 60%. The administration range is 18%, N schedule is 60% and SPALC averages 44%.

For salary distribution, Whichel said 72% are below the midpoint to current range.

“That is a significant level of employees below midpoint,” she said.

For the market rate employees – 34% are paid at the rate slightly different from the set market rate.

For grade progression — the distance between pay grades — it sits at 7% for most areas.

The top three issues based on employee feedback were competitive pay with market peers, adjusting compensation/pay to account for the local cost of living and accurately aligning pay with the district according to job functions.

The market survey collected data from 16 peers – school districts, counties, and cities. The survey used 196 classifications as benchmarks, which provided about 1,000 data points.

The market comparison at the 50th percentile revealed:

• At the minimum 0.4% below

• At the midpoint 4.7% are below

• At the maximum 4.2% below

• Average range spread 47.3%

“You are running about 5% behind market on average plans. Your average range spread from mid to max, you are slightly wider than some of your peers,” Whichel said.

She said the suggestion is to be at 50% for the range spread and 6% between each pay grade to allow that room to grow.

The proposed SPALC pay plan had 15 grades with a minimum, midpoint and maximum dollar amount. For example, grade 10 had a minimum amount of $26.19 to a maximum $39.28.

The implementation strategy consisted of two options — bring to new minimum and minimum year data factor.

“As you progress through 2-7, 7-14 (years) we adjusted you an additional couple of percentages. Not really inflating positions,” she said.

To bring in a new minimum that impacted 4,375 employees it would have a total implementation cost of more than $3.5 million.

With the minimum year data factor piece, that implementation cost would be a little more than $6.1 million.

Board member Cathleen Morgan thought the data was fascinating. She said the biggest challenge is creating and implanting a performance review system.

“I don’t know how you change that culture,” she said.

Morgan said the growth that needs to take place in a position is the growth reflected in compensation.

“I think you have done an awesome job. To get past the qualitative judgements about my salary, my position, we really have to change the culture of how people are evaluated and link it to be meaningful,” she said.

Board member Chris Patricca asked about wage increases being tied to the amount of time the employees are with the district.

“That gives me some concern. Amount of time in the district does not lead to excellence,” she said.

Chief Financial Officer Dr. Ami Desamours said they very much do want to base compensation on performance as well.

“Time and time alone does not tell you about the quality and contribution of an employee,” Whichel said. “We wanted to give you a base line. By taking date ranges and adding increments, addresses compression.”

Desamours said relief is on the way.

“The goal is to be able to rectify that in this round, maybe not completely for every employee. It might be a multi-step, multi-year process,” she said. “The expectation is this year some progress will be made.”