HOME > Staff Page > Stepless Salary Schedule > FAQ's

Q. Would you explain the classified professional growth?
A. In Deer Valley, we had a system where, if you got 15 pre-approved credits, you received a $.35 increase and each credit was 15 seat hours of work. We changed that system to when you finish each 5 credits, you receive a $.10 increase. Under the new system, the employees can get an increase after every 5 credits instead of having to wait until they have the full 15 credits.

Q. Does Deer Valley have an override? What happens to the salary schedule when an override fails?
A. Yes, Deer Valley has an override. If an override fails, it is phased out. You lose 1/3 of your override in the first year. We are not going to take away from someone's salary and take money away from them next year. All it would affect is how much of a flat amount and how much percent increase you could give employees, and it would probably be nothing if you lost your override. Even more than that you might need to take away programs to free up money.

Q. How many overrides has DV had?
A. This is Deer Valley's second override. It has been going on since 1991 and is in its fourth renewal. It is an M&O, 10% override. The override is in its third year of a 5-year fully-funded override. It will begin phasing out by 1/3 in the 6th year.

Q. Across the board, how closely tied and effective is the stepless salary equivalent to the cost of living increase, which, current data is about 4 or 4.1% the last two years? Does the stepless salary schedule keep up with the cost of living?
A. No, it doesn't relate to it, just like your current salary schedules don't. There's no correlation.

Q. So, you would look at the pot of money you have and distribute it, and then you would compare it to what the cost of living is, but there's no connection to keeping up with the cost of living?
A. No.

Q. And you don't you keep that as a goal - to try to keep up with the cost of living increase?
A. Actually, because I was a teacher for a long time, and I worked in the district for a long time, my goal always, as a business manager and board member, was to give absolutely as much money to salaries and benefits to our staff as we could. But if the cost of living is 6%, the only way that you're going to give a 6% raise (if you only have 3% new money - 2% from the legislature and 1% from new students), is one of two ways: You can reduce the amount of money for supplies, utilities, etc., or you can increase class sizes, cut existing programs, etc., to keep up with inflation. You're not going to get more money - the money stays the same.

Q. Did any classified staff lose money going from a step salary schedule to the range system? Would there be a loss of incentive hours already accumulated?
A. No. Everybody in the district starts at what you're currently making. You can't lose any money on your straight base salary any more than you could on your existing structure that you have today. We always start with what you're currently making and it goes up from there.

Q. So, the classified people that have already maxed out on their professional hours would be limited?
A. That would be up to you as a classified group. What we did in professional growth hours was we changed the maximum number of credits accepted to 75 (prior to this it was around 40). So, it's up to you as the individual group or the administration or the board, whoever does this for you - to decide how many hours you can get that are acceptable. It may be the same, it may be more. That's a local decision, but it doesn't affect your salary.

Q. In your district, with your new salary schedule, do certified and classified personnel have a say, or is there some kind of negotiation, in changes that need to be made, say if there needs to be a cut in programs to add more money to the salary schedule?
A. No. That is a recommendation by the cabinet to the board to either add new staff members or keep or add new programs. That is an administrative recommendation to the board. However, we take input. If, for example, we were going to take away a reading program, we would first talk to the board about it. We would then talk to the associations. Personnel do not make the decision, but we value their input. They may have ideas we haven't thought of. The input is valuable but the final decision and recommendation comes from the administration.

Q. On Indian gaming, is it always 100% that can go in at the discretion to the M&O, or is that up to the employee group?
A. The way the law reads is up to 50% of Indian gaming money may be used for salaries, but does not have to be used. It does not go into M&O. It has to be kept separate. It is used as an add-on to your salary.

Q. You addressed 301 and how the inflation factor was going to be done away with in another year or so. Is that correct?
A. The inflation factor is not tied to 301. The 301 pot from the State level is made up of two components. First is a .6% of a cent sales tax, which can fluctuate with inflation. The other part of the money that goes into 301 for schools comes from interest on state land trust.
The .6% of a cent was to be collected for 20 years, 2001 to 2021. That money is to be put in a separate pot. Statewide inflation will have an impact on 301. If people aren't buying things, they won't collect as much. So that pot of money could be lower from one year to the next.

Q. I’m a classified employee and I’d like to thank you for explaining all this. Can you summarize why it would be beneficial for us to go from our current schedule to the stepless schedule?
A. Like I said in the beginning – it doesn’t create more money, so you shouldn’t get more money and you shouldn’t get less money. All it does is provide a mechanism for taking the amount of money that there is available and have a system to pass it out. Let’s just say it takes $600,000 to give everyone in your district a step. If you only have $500,000, but it costs $600,000, now you’re in a state of chaos. You have no structure to give raises, and even if you could make cuts to come up with your $600,000, you still have about 20% of the people that don’t get a raise [because they are at the end of the salary schedule]. And you have done nothing to change your salary schedule so that it attracts new people to your district.
So the main benefit of the stepless schedule is that no matter how much is available, whether it is more than what your steps currently are, or it’s less than what your current steps are, it provides a mechanism for distributing the funds that are there.

Q. In your first year of implementation in Deer Valley, how did you place the people on the salary schedule and how did you decide on beginning salary?
A. For beginning salary, we just kept the existing salary schedule we had. We took our old salary schedule and cut it off at 5 steps and that became our entry salary schedule. And then we said, “You as an individual were making $24,000 – that’s where you are. That’s your starting point."

Q. Currently, on a step salary schedule, there’s motivation for the board and administration to give steps because it’s a clear-cut guide. But in this new system, what is the motivation for the board and the administration to put as much money as possible into salaries? It seems like it would be easier for administration/board to spend more on programs and then say salary increases will be small because we only have so much money.
A. Yes, it could be a negative that maybe you’re not as stringent about giving a step.  At Deer Valley, we put the motivation for the admininstration and board in a beginning statement that we were going to put in more than the average of our comparative districts.
You have to have a certain amount of money to operate the school district efficiently. We’d be derelict to use our supply money and utilities money to increase salaries. Under current conditions, we have to come up with a way to give increases. How are we going to do that? We can cut programs. We could raise our insurance deductibles. But when all is said and done, you’ve left 20% of the people out of the picture; there’s no professional growth; there’s no change in the salary schedule.

Q. What are the main advantages of this proposed pay schedule to what we have now?
A. The advantages are that it allows you to split up the money that you have available, once the state decides the amount given to the district. Under your old system, when you have “lock-ins,” just trying to move everyone down on the salary schedule takes about 2.75% new money. In those years when you don’t have 2.75%, you have no system of distributing the money that you do have. So what it does is gives a system of distributing the funds available regardless of the amount. If you have more money that year than what steps would normally be, you have the same system. If there’s less money, you have a system. Under the existing system, when you have the lock-in steps, it leaves out about 20% employees, who are capped out at the end of the salary schedule. So this prevents that. It gives everybody, on an equitable basis, a portion of the money that’s available.

Q. You said there was no cap, and yet there is a cap of 1.6 times on classified pay.
A. That’s in the Deer Valley plan. It was our classified’s wish (the other two employee groups decided otherwise) that they have a top on their salary schedule, with a beginning and an end.  That doesn’t mean that yours will have to be that way. That was our classified’s preference. Even though we have a cap, that cap moves. Part of the salary increase goes to a percent amount, which moves the base salary amount.

Q. For classified, is there a procedure in your district to address reclassifications?
A. Yes. When positions are given more responsibility, our procedure is for the supervisor to make a request with justification to HR to have the job reclassified. The request goes from HR to the executive cabinet for the decision of reclassification.

Q. You said that the Legislature froze the inflation factor. And so, now, the most they will give us is 2% or the inflation, whichever is less, and that goes until 2021?
A. That’s right.
Q. So that is something we should be lobbying for?
A. First of all, let me say that the Legislature did not do that. The Legislature put that in a bill that was part of 301 that the voters voted on, although the voters didn’t really know what they were doing. It was part of the bill that was the initiative to 301.

Q. If a certified employee already has 90+ credits of professional growth, how are they compensated when they are moved onto the stepless schedule?
A. We changed our schedule by putting in the maximum amount to 90 credits above your highest degree.

Q&A RECEIVED VIA E-MAIL

Q. On this stepless schedule, would a teacher's salary ever go down? In other words, not counting all the coaching extra whatevers, would the salary continue to go up if money was available?
A. The direct answer is that it "could" happen, BUT not as a result of a particular schedule. All of our certified contracts say under the "I Agree" section #1 that "this contract is subject to adjustment for the 2007-2008 school year if substantial changes in funding should occur."