By Erik Harris
HOMEWOOD – The Jefferson County Board of Education voted to remove the topic of salary schedules from today’s meeting.
That decision, which passed with a 3-2 vote, was made in order to give board members more time in deciding on whether or not to give pay raises to certain Jefferson County employees.
“We’re not saying that we’re not going to approve this,” said board president Dean Taylor. “What we’re saying is, we need to fully understand it. We need all the data on it, we need to understand what this raise means in the overall budget.”
Upon the amendment of the agenda, a large portion of those in the Central Office board room went for the doors. Many athletic coaches attended Thursday’s meeting, hoping to receive a raise that county coaches haven’t seen in 12 years.
Those coaches, along with child nutrition managers, have the most to gain from the matter. Following the removal of the agenda item, members from both groups met to discuss what to do moving forward.
“We’ve got some great employees out there and we appreciate all the work they do, so we take these decisions very seriously,” said Taylor.
According to reports, many employees felt that they were not being heard, and were disappointed that they were unable to publically address the board on Thursday.
“That’s one of the reasons that we were in favor of tabling it today, this did not make it go away,” Taylor said. “This is giving an opportunity for us to have a work session or a committee meeting that will be open to the public, and I encourage each one of them to come. Let the board understand what you do everyday. I know we’ve go some hard working employees, but there’s no way I know the details of every job position we have here.”
The board now hopes to look farther into the pay hikes in a work session that will be open to the public. Members hope to vote on the situation before July 1.
“It’s not going to be a formal meeting,” said Taylor of the upcoming work session. “We can get in there, roll our sleeves up and take a look at this.”