Agenda - 06-08-1999 - Laserfiche WebLink

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m mission. Last year, the Board of Education received a report justifying increases in selected administrative positions. This is the first year of a two -year phase -in. The cost to complete the upgrade to administrators' salaries in 1999 -2000 is $49,000. Increase Board members' stipends $5,250 Stipends paid to school board members are overdue for an increase. This would increase members' stipends from $700 to $1400 per year, with an additional $100 for the vice -chair and $600 for the chair. A board member now receives approximately $13.50 per week, in many cases not even enough to cover out -of- pocket expenses. Total for Compensation $4279450 Technology Extend technology specialists' contracts $40,596 The school district is investing more than a half - million dollars ($500,000) annually in technology, yet it will be of little use if hardware and software systems are not well supported and teachers are not adequately trained in how to integrate technology into the instructional program. Several years ago, the district provided each school with funding to support a half -time technology specialist. Each school matched this allocation in order to have a full-time technology specialist. Unfortunately, we are losing approximately one- third of these specialists annually as they leave for higher paying jobs or positions with a narrower scope of responsibilities. This budget request provides funding to increase the contract length for tech specialists from 10.5 to 11 months for those in elementary or middle schools and to 12 months for those in high schools. This will help make their annual salaries more competitive although it hardly solves the problem. Add technology technicians $194,114 In order to make the job more manageable and to free up the tech specialists to collaborate with teachers, we are proposing the addition of a technician position for every two schools, a total of 6.5 positions. Technicians would be trained to perform the day -to- day, routine maintenance functions that encumber the tech specialists and, too often, result in hardware downtime when backlogs accumulate. These additional positions will be classified at three pay - grades above a teacher assistant. Total for Technology $234,710 Reductions /Other ($1639600) As is our practice, we examined our present budget in an effort to identify any reductions that could be made to offset the requested budget increases. A total of $220,000 was identified. Most of the savings were associated with one -time expenses that had been budgeted within the past year or two. In addition, we reduced the contingency account from $250,000 to $200,000, eliminated allocations to schools for duty -free lunch periods (although teachers will still have duty -free lunches), and eliminated $40,000 of capital expenses from the operating budget.