Jefferson County Public Schools said Tuesday that it has
discovered that a controversial salary study that was released in April
has a major mistake that made it seem that the district was paying a lot
more in "premium" salaries than it is.
In April, the state's largest school district released information from an outside contractor
that said in part that JCPS was paying between $52 million and $66
million in "premium" salaries for certified administrators and
classified staff – non-teachers – when compared to similar school
districts around the country.
But on Tuesday,
Superintendent Donna Hargens said that Virginia-based Management Advisory Group International Inc., which conducted the salary study, had
"grossly overestimated" the salaries that JCPS paid to non-teacher
employees compared to other benchmark school districts.
Instead
of spending $50 million or more in "premium" salaries for non-teachers,
the figure is closer to $10 million to $14 million, Hargens told the
school board Tuesday.
"To say that this district is
outraged is an understatement," Hargens said. "This study caused
employees to feel unvalued and underappreciated. It also caused
significant stress between employees at different levels. A $40-million
mistake by MAG is unacceptable. MAG owes the district, its employees,
this board and this community an apology."
The release
of the salary study in April —as well as a district discussion about the
idea of not giving step raises or cost of living increases in the
2016-17 school year for any employee making more than $14 an hour as
"market reconciliation" — caused immediate outrage among JCPS employees
and others in the community.
JCPS
paid MAG $192,000 for the salary study. It is unclear whether JCPS will
be getting any refund. The salary study began in December 2014 and was
made public in April 2016.
Hargens on Tuesday referenced
communication between the district and an attorney for MAG — even
quoting part of a letter from MAG's attorney that she said showed that
MAG takes responsibility for the error.
A JCPS spokeswoman on Tuesday evening said she did not immediately have a copy of the letter that Hargens referenced.
"We are exploring our legal options regarding MAG," spokeswoman Allison Martin said.
JCPS
has known about the error since January, Chief Financial Officer
Cordelia Hardin said, saying that the district has been going back and
forth with MAG since.
When asked if the error was
contained to non-teacher salaries, Hardin said she wasn't sure and that
her focus was on the non-teacher part of the study.
"We're not going to make any changes based strictly on that report," Hardin said.
Board
chairman Chris Brady said that he is "deeply disappointed" to learn of
the mistake, saying he believes it did "real damage" in the district. He
thanked the district for finding the error.
However,
Brady said that a salary study was needed for the district, which had
not had such a comprehensive compensation review since 1979.
Brady
said the district is looking at its options in its contract with MAG,
but noted that "it may cost more than it's worth to seek some kind of
restitution."
Brady said he was "almost not surprised" by
the discovery of the error, because the numbers in the salary study
didn't seem right to him.
Brent McKim, president of the
county's teachers union, had the same sentiment, saying he had long been
saying that it didn't seem feasible that JCPS was so significantly
paying employees above the averages of comparable markets.
"The
math just didn't make sense for $50 million," McKim said. He added that
"What's surprising is they make an error this big and take this long to
find it. ... This has disrupted many people's lives and caused a great
deal of stress."
The contractor that compiled a salary study for Jefferson County
Public Schools admits its error made it seem the district was paying a
lot more in "premium" salaries than it actually was, but said the error
was limited to a supplemental report and does not negate the entire
study.
"There was one error in one report, and we took
responsibility for that," said Carolyn Long, vice president
of Virginia-based Management Advisory Group International Inc., which
conducted the salary study.
Long said the roughly $40
million error was in some extra information her firm provided as a
courtesy in an addition to the original report on salaries that JCPS had
requested. She said that JCPS has "conflated the error in the
ancillary" file with the more than year's worth of work her company did
for JCPS.
"It's a very long study and it was a very detailed and
complex undertaking," Long said. "There were a lot of moving parts to
it."
Still, the revelation of the error on Tuesday caused a new
round of furor this week over the controversial salary study that was
originally released in April.
"That salary study hurt us during
contract negotiations," said John Stovall, president of the local
teamsters union. "(Is JCPS) going to come back and renegotiate raises
because this salary study was flawed?"
Instead
of spending $50 million or more in "premium" salaries for nonteachers,
the figure is closer to about $14 million, Hargens told the school board
Tuesday.
At issue was apparently a miscalculation — which MAG
said was caused by a "computational error" — that caused some
employees' annualized salaries to be misrepresented.
For instance,
a spreadsheet given to the Courier-Journal by JCPS Chief Financial
Officer Cordelia Hardin shows the example of an intervention specialist
whose annualized salary was calculated at $164,563 instead of $117,816.
When
the salary study was initially released in April, the findings —as well
as a district discussion about an idea of not giving step raises or
cost of living increases in the 2016-17 school year — caused immediate
outrage among JCPS employees and others in the community.
Stovall
said the initial release of the salary study caused employees to feel
undervalued and underappreciated for the work they do. He said that now,
his members feel like the error is a "slap in the face."
Ron
Richmond, political director for the regional chapter of the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, agreed.
Richmond
said more than 4,000 of his union's members were "directly impacted by
this miscalculation" and said he hopes JCPS will take action over the
flawed results.
JCPS paid MAG $192,000 for the salary study. The salary study began in December 2014 and was made public in April 2016.
In
a Feb. 22 letter, an attorney for MAG told JCPS that the company
"completely, professionally and credibly completed the contractual
requirements at issue," saying that the report with the error was
provided to JCPS as a courtesy.
JCPS on Tuesday said it was exploring its legal options regarding its contract with MAG.
The
question now is on what, if anything, JCPS plans to do to alter its
salary structure. Hargens said that the error in the MAG calculations
was found in January as the district was working on figuring out options
for a future compensation structure.
Angie Moorin, a member of
the community advisory team that looked over and provided
recommendations based on the salary study, said it is hard for her to
wrap her head around the error found in the report "because I think
about the fallout that came about because of that (study)."
She
said the discovery of the error "changes the urgency of addressing"
the issue of restructuring JCPS salaries. She said that she still
thinks there are better ways to allocate some of JCPS' money, but said
the initial numbers provided by MAG about the "premium" salaries made it
sound like "there was this spigot that was wide open that needed to be
addressed."
Moorin noted that "you can't make good decisions with
bad numbers" and wants to learn more about any other potential issues
with the study.
But
it doesn't change the fact, he said, that JCPS needs to do something
different in restructuring to find more money to put in classrooms.
"There
is some very very hard work ahead on restructuring the organization and
on finding the resources that are required to get the (district's)
strategy funded," Jones said.
No comments:
Post a Comment