JACKSON BOARD CONSIDERS SALARY PACKAGE

JACKSON -- A proposed salary schedule presented to the Jackson School Board Tuesday would give teachers in the district their first pay increase in four years.

The board will consider the salary schedule for the 1993-94 school year at its July 13 meeting.

The schedule would raise the starting salary of a teacher in the Jackson district $1,000, from $18,400 to $19,400, and add a 22nd step to the schedule with a maximum salary of $35,114 for a teacher with a master's degree plus 16 years.

The new schedule would bring the average salary for a teacher in the Jackson district to $27,500, which is still slightly below the state-wide average of $28,948.

Total cost of the pay increase package is about $400,000, according to Marilyn Jansen, chairman of the CTA Salary and Welfare Committee. Of the district's 189 teachers, 88 have a master's degree or more.

"Our main concern was to get the base salary up to where it was competitive with the other surrounding school districts," Jansen explained. "The new schedule has been completely revised to eliminate all of the inequities that were in previous schedules."

Jansen said the new schedule contains incremental steps of approximately $582 per step throughout the 22 steps. In the past, this amount varied widely, she said.

Superintendent Wayne Maupin said the proposed salary schedule "is one that I can support. It is one that we can financially support and maintain without jeopardizing the financial status of the district."

Teacher salaries in the Jackson district had been frozen for the past three years because of decreased state funding in the school foundation formula.

If additional monies become available to the district in the new school foundation formula, Maupin said, they will be used to reduce classroom size, a major concern of the school board and administration the past several years.

In other business, the board approved the low bid of Penzel Construction Company of Jackson for phase one of the new Jackson Middle School project. The project includes earth work and preparations for actual construction of the $5 million school.

The Penzel bid of $192,000 was one of seven received, and was well under the architect's estimate of $205,900. The low bid includes construction of a retention basin.

Site work will begin as soon as the necessary paperwork is completed. Tentative completion of phase one is scheduled by the end of August. Bids for the actual construction of the new school will be let in September.