BV board increases pay for veteran teachers

While the LEARNS Act significantly increases the starting salaries of teachers in many school districts across the state, the Berryville School Board is making sure veteran teachers are taken care of as well.

At its regular meeting on Monday, April 17, the board approved a raise of $4,250 for those teachers already at the $50,000 starting-salary threshold, according to Superintendent Owen Powell.

A $1,500 salary increase for all classified employees also was approved by the board.

“Our certified salary schedule will be a minimum of $50,000,” Powell said. “We felt like we needed to do better for our veteran teachers.

“The way the LEARNS Act is set up, it really rewards your beginning teacher. You’re going to have a teacher straight out of college starting at $50,000, which is great. I think that’s going to help attract some people into education. But the LEARNS Act doesn’t really reward the veteran teachers and so we felt like we needed to do a little more than what was required.”

Powell said salary schedule steps will be frozen for certified staff until funding assurances are evident.

“We’ve got to wait and see how all this funding is going to come in and make sure that it comes in like they say it’s going to come in,” Powell said. “Next year we can look, and as long as the finances are coming in as they should be, then we might be able to look at doing some steps in the future.

“This is affecting every school district out there. You’ve got some districts that were already really close to $50,000, maybe $48,000 or so. But whenever you take a smaller school district, schools like Berryville, Eureka, where our base was so far off that $50,000, that’s a huge increase to our budget.”

The board also approved increasing the daily pay for substitute teachers from $90 to $100.

“Substitutes are extremely difficult to find,” Powell said. “We’re just trying to be more competitive. … It’s hard to find good substitutes.”

A building that has been used for storage and recently damaged by storms will be torn down, the board decided. That land will then likely be used for a new middle school playground, Powell said.

“Whenever we demolish that building it’s going to open up the whole center of campus right there,” he said. “That will be a good area for a middle school playground.”

Powell also presented a Legislative Audit report to the board.

“We didn’t have any findings and that’s the way you want it,” he said. “It was a good, good audit report.”

Other approvals included a summer school budget, budgets for federal programs, purchase service contract renewals, three fundraising requests and out-of-state travel requests for elementary, pre-K and kindergarten students to travel to Branson and the girls basketball team to travel to a summer camp, also in Branson.

A summer school staff of 47 also was approved.

“It’s regular school, just in the summer,” Powell said. “You have to have all the staff. You’ve got to have teachers, food service workers and bus drivers, so you need a lot of staff.”

Powell reported the district’s enrollment at 1,790, which is 35 more than the same time period a year ago, he said.

In personnel moves, the board approved the resignations of food service worker Jessica Wilson, elementary teacher Heather Ogden, high school teachers Melissa Mease and Lavona Sue Clanton. The board also accepted the resignation of Bryan Hutson, head football coach and middle school dean of students, who is moving to the Hot Springs Lakeside School District.

Hires approved included: Valerie Deen, educational interpreter; Dustin Graham, Tech II; Karen Amy, cafeteria substitute; Jamie Nunez, cafeteria substitute; Dan Wallace, custodial substitute.

Approved transfers included Lynn Fleming from Tech I to Tech II, Dustin Graham from Tech II to Tech III, Daniel Smith from Tech III to the district’s technology coordinator, Shaanti O’Dell from intermediate school teacher to gifted and talented coordinator and Candace Curtis from high school special education to dyslexia coordinator.