Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Personnel Wages topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Board approves pay boosts and lane restructuring for support staff, adopts handbook updates
Summary
The Manitowoc School District board approved targeted raises for support staff, restructured pay 'lanes' to improve retention and adopted handbook changes (including 15-minute leave increments). The board was told the changes add roughly $375,000 above a baseline 2.63% across the affected categories.
The Manitowoc School District board on Monday approved a package of wage increases, pay-matrix restructuring and handbook updates aimed at raising support-staff pay closer to regional market levels and improving retention.
Stacy, personnel staff, told the board the district had analyzed regional comparisons and found building and grounds, paraprofessionals and clerical positions were paid “pretty low” relative to peers. She proposed a 7.5% increase for paraprofessionals, building/custodial and maintenance staff and a 3% increase for a non‑certified group (examples cited: IT staff, educational interpreters). “We recognize the gap between these groups was significant,” Stacy said, and described a commitment to annual review of the data and rankings.
Board members heard the projected budget impact: approving the full proposed increases on top of an assumed 2.63% baseline would add about $375,000, bringing the total related package to roughly $600,000. A member of the board said the raises were necessary to “keep the people that we have” amid a tightening job market.
The personnel presentation also proposed consolidating many narrow job lanes into fewer, clearer pay lanes, raising minimum starting wages and widening the top-to-bottom range to reward longevity. Stacy described the change as intended to simplify onboarding and reduce cases in which “the most I can make for working here 46 years… is $4 more than when I started.” The board discussed lane categories, minimums and maximums and asked for clarity on how employees would be placed within lanes.
Handbook updates approved at the same time reflected mostly procedural changes: replacing a formal health-risk assessment requirement with a physician verification form for insurance eligibility, changing sick and personal leave from hourly to 15‑minute increments, revising vision insurance eligibility, clarifying COBRA timing and tightening maximum simultaneous personal-day allowances (from 12 to 8, with an emergency exception). The staff said union representatives had reviewed the handbook proposals and raised only questions about the personal-day caps.
A motion to approve the wage adjustments, the new support-staff matrix and handbook changes passed unanimously. The board directed staff to return with annual data showing where support-staff pay ranks against comparable districts.
