Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 board members have approved a 3.5 percent salary increase for secretaries and custodians and a 2 percent salary increase for exempt employees for the 2013-14 school year.
But Superintendent Philip Bender said the administration would work on a rubric to create a merit-based approach to salary increases. The rubric would provide criteria for evaluating administrators, exempt employees, custodians and secretaries.
“I think it’s a good way to evaluate people,” said Bender. “We’re looking for folks who do their jobs, do their jobs well and those who do them at an exceptional level.”
Bender said it was extremely rare for a school district to use a merit-based system.
Step advancement for custodians and secretaries will be eliminated for the next school year. The board has a goal to shift “nonteaching employee groups” away from step advancement, Bender said. With a step system, increases could have ranged from 2 to 9 percent. By averaging the step increases, the board arrived at a 3.5 percent increase for custodians and secretaries, Bender said.
“The raise is a fair increase across the board,” said Board President Anthony Borrelli. “We’re trying to honor them with the appropriate salaries.”
Borrelli said it was not the board’s “intent to be injurious” to the secretaries and custodians.
The staff proposed an increase of 2.75 percent for exempt employees, which includes the public information coordinator, physical and occupational therapists, director of facilities and others, but the board approved a 2 percent raise.
Board member Scott Zimmerman strongly suggested the district conduct a salary survey of similar jobs in the market to make sure district employees were being neither overpaid nor underpaid.
“We do need to consider the market,” he said.
Bender said the merit-based evaluations would begin in the upcoming school year and be applied to the next school year. The merit-based approach won’t be applied to teachers.
On another matter, business manager Rebecca Allard said some of the Community Finance Committee’s goals when evaluating student fees are to compare fee revenue collected in 2012-13 to the costs of each program in student registration fees, extracurricular fees and instrumental music fees.
Zimmerman said employee salaries and stipends should also be a factor when creating fees, even though it is uncommon for school districts to consider them when setting fees. Borrelli said it was important to see all the costs involved in each program.
“I think we’re just looking for information,” said Bender. “This is going to be kind of cutting edge because most school districts kind of pull a figure out of a hat and say this is how we’re going to create the fees.”
