YUHSD board OKs raises for staff

Yuma Union High School District workers continuing into the fall will see a 3 percent raise in their pay, the governing board decided Monday afternoon.

“Everyone that was hired before April 1 who is a continuing employee will get a 3 percent raise,” in the upcoming school year, said YUHSD Superintendent Toni Badone Tuesday afternoon.

The YUHSD governing board approved an employee compensation plan for the upcoming school year at a special meeting at Yuma High, where the district offices have located temporarily while a new building is constructed on its Avenue A site.

Full-time benefited employees employed at the end of the semester will also get an extra $500 in their December paychecks, due to Prop 123 funding, Badone said.

Another plus for fulltime employees is that there is “no increase in cost for insurance to our employees for the coming year,” Badone said, and no reduction in benefits. The district pays the health insurance premiums for its benefitted employees, but workers must pay for any dependents added to the plan.

“No increase for dependents is a really good thing,” Badone said, noting that this is the sixth year the district, which selffunds its health insurance costs, has not had an increase in claims. She credited the district insurance trust board’s monitoring of the fluctuation of health claims from year-to-year.

“Because of the way the claims went (this past year), we thought we were going to have to have an increase, but we didn’t have to,” she said.

New teachers to the district will also see a jump in their base starting salaries, Badone noted, from $31,600 to $32,232 for a Bachelor’s degree. Pay grades for teachers with higher credentials also increased as well.

“We’re in current-year funding, which is challenging if you are declining in enrollment, but we actually grew this year and so we’re confident that we can use those dollars to pay teachers,” Badone said.

The board also approved employee contracts and work agreements for the coming year, and routine personnel actions for the eight days prior to the meeting. The district’s fiscal year starts July 1.

Board member Teri Brooks was OK’d as the delegate to the Arizona School Boards Association assembly Sept. 9 with David Lara as alternate.

“This is the second year in a row we’ve been able to offer raises in our district,” Badone said (workers got a 5 percent increase last year), “and that’s the first in a decade or something, and we’re excited to be able to do it.”