BY TED SHOCKLEY, Eastern Shore Post —
The Accomack County School Board will not retract a large pay increase for school guidance counselors that had been mistakenly approved as part of a new salary scale the school superintendent later said was incorrectly tabulated and contained errors.
School counselors and reading specialists were approved Aug. 25 to be on a salary scale that pays them $65,464 annually for step 1 employees, $13,000 more than the school system apparently intended, according to school board documents.
As part of the large increase, guidance counselors and reading specialists on the 15th salary step were approved by the school board to earn $84,353, $21,000 more than teachers in the same salary step.
In the new scale, 10-year guidance counselors and reading specialists get paid more than 30-year teachers while working only five more days each year than teachers. The counselors and specialists have 205-day contracts while teachers have 200-day contracts.
In the aftermath, school Superintendent Gennifer Miller said “some errors were identified within the scale that require correction” and said updated contracts would be issued “once those corrections are approved” by the school board.
But the issue left the school board in a conundrum — rescind the salary increase and send the message that not even pay raises can be trusted within the school system, or let the mistakenly approved pay increase stand and create a wide salary gulf between teachers and specialists.
The school board essentially voted to let the increases stand when it defeated a motion to approve a salary scale that apparently would have set a lower pay scale for the specialists. Only school board member Janet Martin Turner voted in favor of rescinding the raise.
School board member Glenn Neal abstained from the vote but did not specify a reason why. Neal’s wife is a guidance counselor at Chincoteague Elementary School.
School board members did not specify how the board will adjust its fiscal year budget to accommodate the pay increase.
Miller did not comment.
The vote came after hearing from a dozen people — many of them school guidance counselors — who supported keeping the higher salaries.
The vote came at the end of a four-hour meeting that left school board members visibly exasperated.
“Finally the board agreed on something,” said Malcolm White, a school board member. “Hopefully, the next meeting we’ll be out of here earlier.”
Speakers detailed the rigorous certification requirements of guidance counselors and the myriad duties they have at schools.
“I truly believe our school counselors deserve to be recognized and compensated appropriately,” said Amy Bundick, the department head in the school system’s high school nurse aide program.
Barbara Parker, a counselor at Nandua High School, told the school board that a counselor’s duties “extend far beyond meeting with students” and even involve state testing responsibilities.
