August 29, 2022

Dear Colleagues,

I apologize for the length of this email, but it’s important. You may have read about the Arkansas Legislative Council (ALC) recommendation to use ARP ESSER funds to provide retention and recruitment bonuses of $5,000 for teachers and $2,500 for full-time classified school district staff.

This recommendation was a counter response to the Governor’s attempt to add teacher raises to the special session agenda. The ALC rescinded a $500 million American Recovery Plan (ARP) allocation previously provided to districts more than a year ago in May 2021. School districts have been actively spending their ARP Federal allocations on areas that could be justified as related to recovery from COVID.

Districts were provided ESSER funds for COVID relief at varying rates. Funds were distributed based on the Title I formula, which means that school districts with higher poverty levels received more funds per student. I’ve attached a spreadsheet that reflects the amount of ARP funds that every school district received. You see in the last column a dollar amount per student. Since there is a large variation in sizes of school districts, looking at the per student funding is the only way to view an “apples to apples” comparison. You’ll notice on the spreadsheet our school district is fourth from the bottom.

There was significant confusion about whether the federal funds could be used for bonuses. When our ARP plan was first considered and approved, we were informed we could not use the funds for bonuses. We currently have $6.7M in ARP ESSER funds remaining. Our plan is to use these funds for goods and services we need that would otherwise be purchased from operating funds:

Buses $4,600,000.00
Chromebooks. $1,025,080.00
Training. $ 574,920.00
Summer Programs $ 500,000.00

To implement the ALC recommendation of $5,000 each to licensed and $2,500 each to classified it would cost $10.8M. The District would need to find $4.1M in other sources to implement the recommendation.

While we’ve been cautious to avoid using ESSER funding for bonuses, we’ve still been able to provide salary increases through savings we’ve identified in the operations budget.

2020-21 1% increase to all salary schedules, resulting in 2.3% raise with step
2020 Additional bonus of 1.2% of each employee’s contract ($1,000 cap)
2021-22 2.5% increase to all salary schedules, resulting in 3.8% raise with step
2021 Additional bonus of 1.2% of each employee’s contract ($1,000 cap)
2022-23 2% increase to all salary schedules, resulting in 3.3% raise with step

The short-sighted plan to provide a bonus without lifting salary schedules is not good enough for our district. We can do better. Overall increases to salary schedules are more valuable to employees than one time bonuses as these are reoccurring salary increases for the staff member. I recognize that housing costs continue to rise in our area. I also know inflation has increased the cost of living in every other area of life.

Today, we are in the top three across the salary schedule in the state. Our goal is to be even better. The leadership team and board of education are committed to continuing to be the best in the state and reflect that in compensation. With that in mind, we’re including the Personnel Policy Committees to work with us to address increasing salary schedules for both certified and classified staff. This work will begin in October. We believe our teachers and our staff deserve to earn higher salaries ,not one time bonuses. We’re committed to supporting you the way you support children and families, not just during a pandemic, but year after year.

As the talk of teacher raises swirl about you, please know we are working to provide you with increases that are best for your family and sustainable for the future.

Sincerely,
Debbie

Test Organization (Bentonville)

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Test Superintendent Letter