$960 teacher bonuses OK’d

State official approves payouts in county school district

Teachers in the Pulaski County Special School District can expect to receive salary bonuses of $960 each before the annual winter break for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

Arkansas Education Commissioner Tony Wood, who acts in lieu of an elected school board in the state-controlled Pulaski County Special district, approved the bonus payments Friday on the unanimous recommendation of the district’s Community Advisory Board the night before.

The bonus will go to all of the district’s 1,260 teachers and 120 certified administrators.

“The payroll department has begun to process the payment of the bonus,” Pulaski County Special district Superintendent Jerry Guess wrote in an email to all employees Friday. “We are unsure of precisely what day it will be paid, but I am confident checks will be issued before the Christmas break.”

The district has already distributed bonuses of $515 each to noncertified support-service employees.

Pulaski County Special is the second district of three in Pulaski County to award bonuses this year instead of across-the-board pay increases that are built into the employee salary schedule and must be paid annually from here on out.

The North Little Rock School Board approved bonuses for its employees last month. The Little Rock School Board has not taken any action on bonuses or across-the-board raises for its employees this year.

Eligible employees in all three Pulaski County area districts have received pay increases for their additional year of work experience, but employees at the top of their salary schedules are ineligible for those experience increments.

Guess said in an interview Friday that the district, which is still labeled by the state as being in fiscal distress, has achieved a sufficient and stable budget with reserve funds equal to 10 percent of its operating expenses.

“If we can share some of our revenue with employees, then it is good business to acknowledge how much you appreciate people,” Guess said.

In the email, Guess thanked the employees for their hard work on behalf of students.

“I truly believe that we have the most important job in our great nation — we get to help prepare the children of our district for whatever they might choose to do in their future,” he wrote.

The Certified Personnel Policies Committee in the Pulaski County Special district initially urged the district and the Community Advisory Board to recommend a 2 percent salary increase for teachers, which was rejected by Wood.

That prompted the committee to recommend a bonus of $1,250 for teachers, the amount of the bonus in the 2013-14 school year. The Community Advisory Board, however, favored the $960 amount for this year. The Personnel Policies Committee met again earlier this week, Guess said, and voted in support of the $960 amount.

The North Little Rock district is paying bonuses of $975 to the majority of its teachers and $1,250 for that district’s most senior teachers who are at the top of their salary schedule and ineligible for experience increments.