Geneva School District 304 OKs nearly $140,000 hike in employee costs

GENEVA – The Geneva District 304 school board approved recommendations to create a human resources coordinator at a salary of $82,000 and increase the salaries of nine speech language pathologists at a cost of $56,132.

The total cost increase would be $138,132 with benefit costs estimated at $15,000, depending on what health insurance plan would apply for the new human resources position, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Adam Law said.

“Human resources is currently the only district-level department that does not have a coordinator or a director type of position,” Law said at the April 8 school board meeting. “And because of that, it causes a few things. No. 1, it causes some tasks to be misaligned with task and title.”

The result is a job would be sitting on someone’s desk because there is no one in that role, Law said.

The human resources coordinator would be the first line of contact with support staff, he said.

“They would also be working on creating human resources procedures and updating things that haven’t been updated in a while – in a long, long time,” Law said.

When someone leaves the department and a new person is hired and being trained, there is nothing written down to be followed.

“We do not have those normative human resource procedure manuals that – that if one of us was gone tomorrow – the new person could not look at it and say, ‘This is how we perform this particular task,’ ” Law said.

“The Society for Human Resources Management gold standard is two human resources professionals for every 100 employees,” Law said. “Currently, there are two, including myself, for 480 employees. When I saw that, it made sense for me that we are just barely able to keep our heads above water. We are more reactive than proactive when supporting our 966 employees.”

The new position would begin July 1.

Regarding the speech language pathologists, Law said they must have master’s degrees and 47 to 75 graduate hours, plus a clinical internship experience.

A typical teacher’s master’s degree is usually 30 hours, so the speech language pathologist’s graduate time is about double, he said.

In the salary schedule, a speech language pathologist is hired in lane five, with a master’s degree with zero post-graduate hours.

The step and lane salary schedule, as part of its contract with the Geneva Education Association, uses years of experience called steps, and education levels, called lanes, to determine their pay.

“This misaligned hiring formula has caused us to miss candidates and employees over time,” Law said.

The board approved Law’s proposal to adjust the nine speech language pathologists to lane seven, plus 30 graduate hours, to better reflect their master’s degree program.

“We know if we move to this, it will be much easier to recruit and retain quality candidates,” Law said.

The school board approved both proposals at the April 22 meeting.