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Board discusses standardizing positions to seven hours to secure retirement credit
Summary
During approval of personnel actions, staff explained a change to classify certain positions at seven hours so employees receive full service credit from the Retirement Systems of Alabama; the board approved the personnel list as presented.
During routine personnel business, Enterprise City Schools staff described a change requested by the Retirement Systems of Alabama that would set the district's highest-hour position at seven hours so employees in comparable roles would receive full service retirement credit.
"The purpose of this change is the Retirement Systems of Alabama came back and said that whatever your highest hour of a position is, where everyone's doing the same job, the only thing that differentiates the position is the number of hours worked," a staff member said during discussion of the personnel list. "So this is in an effort for us to help protect our employees by putting everybody as a 7 hour worker, which would now be our highest hour position, and they earn full service retirement." The same staff member clarified that affected employees would "have to work more" hours but would not see a reduction in pay: "They're not losing money. They're just having to give up more time, but it helps them on retirement."
The personnel action list — described to the board as covering leaves, transfers, nonrenewals, resignations, employment and supplements — was presented for approval and approved by the board. The transcript does not record a roll-call tally; motions were moved, seconded and members were asked to raise their right hands to indicate approval.
Board members expressed brief concern about staffing counts after multiple retirements were recognized earlier in the meeting; staff said the applicant pool for openings "seems to be building back up" though it remains smaller than in previous years. The board's approval of the personnel list sends the reclassifications and other personnel changes to Human Resources for implementation and for the district to notify the retirement system as needed.
The board did not cite a statute or formal policy by name in the recorded discussion; the transcript attributes the change to guidance from the Retirement Systems of Alabama.
