CAPE SCHOOL BOARD SET TO REVIEW SALARIES

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education has scheduled a special meeting Monday afternoon to discuss teacher salaries and one of the district's budget cuts, elimination of a band director.

The board will meet at 4:30 p.m. at the Central High School auditorium.

A proposed salary package for the coming school year includes a pay raise for teachers and administrators.

The school board must approve the salary proposal before it goes into effect. A committee of teachers and administrators has worked out the proposal.

The salary package agreed to by teachers includes freezing of the salary schedule. However, teachers would be allowed to advance on the schedule. So teachers would make more next year than they make this year.

Business Manager Larry Dew estimates those salary increases would cost $113,000.

Teachers are paid according to a schedule that takes into account the number of years they've taught and the level of education they've attained. Pay increases down the schedule with more years of experience and across the schedule with more education.

A beginning teacher with no experience and a bachelor's degree would make $19,400. A teacher with a masters degree and 12 years experience would make $27,240.

The salary at each of these steps would not be changed. Last year, salaries at each of the steps were increased an average of 2.8 percent.

Under the proposal, Dew said, persons at the end of columns who will not advance across the schedule would receive a one-time payment of either $420 or $540, depending on where the teachers are located on the schedule.

Administrators' salaries would not be increased, but they too would receive a one-time payment of $540.

Dew estimates the cost of proposed one-time payments at $35,000.

The estimated cost of the pay raises will be met by projected increased revenues to the district from local property taxes and state payments. Also the district is saving $25,000 by switching to the Alliance preferred provider option for health insurance.

"We expect this (salary package) to be a wash. We should come out even," Dew said.

Also on the agenda, the board is scheduled to hear a report on the band director issue from the school district's New Funds Committee, the group that handed down the final proposal for $1.2 million in budget cuts approved in March by the board.

One of the cuts included eliminating one half-time band director.

Parents of band students addressed the board earlier this month asking to save band director Mark McHale's job. The board sent the matter back to the New Funds Committee to be reconsidered.

A possible solution has been proposed that would include shifting other music personnel within the district. Superintendent Neyland Clark has said those transfers would have to be made on a voluntary basis.

A closed meeting of the board is also on the agenda.