Grace Mains, The Franklin Press Intern
The Macon County Board of Education addressed the lack of substitute teachers and bus drivers at the monthly meeting on Monday.
With all but Tommy Cabe present, the board discussed financial changes enacted by the state, specifically for substitute teachers, and the shortage of bus drivers.
Need for substitute teachers
The state has a new mandate that substitute teachers must make at least $15 an hour if they are paid from state funds. Substitutes in Macon County were previously paid $120 a day for certified substitutes and $100 a day for non-certified substitutes.
As trained members of the school system, certified substitutes are valued for their services, and the board believes their experience should be reflected in their pay.
The board settled on a decision to increase certified substitute pay from $120 to $150 a day in order to keep the 20% difference between certified and non-certified. Uncertified substitutes will now make $125 for their services.
Although this increase will help the substitute teachers, the community of them is extremely small. Teachers sometimes have a hard time finding substitutes on short notice such as if they are sick or need to care for a sick child at home. Some teachers are pushing back their personal days because of the lack of substitute teachers available. There might be a list of 50 substitutes for a school, yet less than 20% are certified.
Finance Director Angie Cook said it continues to be a struggle to employ certified substitutes. Board member Melissa Evans said maybe the increase in pay would encourage more people to apply to substitute positions.
In the previous school year, the school system spent $593,000 on substitute pay using federal, state and local funds.
“We hope the bulk of that increase was due to COVID,” said Baldwin.
Board considers incentives to recruit bus drivers
The school system had trouble finding bus drivers even before COVID. Now, the board is missing drivers for two half routes and two full routes.
Assistant principals, custodial and clerical staff have been picking up some of the missing routes. The concern is the pay.
Custodians who also drive bus routes often get overtime pay for the extra time they spend driving a bus. Baldwin said they have tried to adjust the hours, with custodial duties ending earlier in the day, but that means the employee has to leave school, drive home and then come back to school to drive the bus. So, driving to and from work twice in one day ends up costing them more money.
Custodians who also drive buses get paid for two jobs: a custodial job and bus driving job; and to pay for overtime, the money is taken from the local custodial budget that is low to begin with.
To rectify the shortage of drivers, the board is considering a sign-on bonus. Baldwin said he was not necessarily in favor of a sign-on bonus, because it is unfair to those who have already signed on without a bonus. On the other hand, Baldwin said anything that could be done to attract more drivers would be helpful.
Chairman Jim Breedlove asked Baldwin to put together a proposal for the board to consider at a later meeting.
Mileage rate increase
The IRS has established new mileage rates for the remaining six months of 2022, according to a letter from North Carolina’s Office of State Budget and Management.
With the rise of gas prices, the business standard rate for the use of a car has increased from 58.5 cents per mile to 62.5 cents. To accompany this change, the OSBM will adjust the reimbursement rate for officers and state employees travelling on official state business until the end of 2022.
The reimbursement rate for a state employee will not exceed the business standard mileage rate (62.5 cents) set forth by the IRS.