Salary errors leave Manatee County teachers 'disheartened'

MANATEE -- When Molly Westbrook first brought a pay discrepancy to the Manatee County School Board -- teachers new to the Manatee County School District with the same amount of experience were being paid more than her -- she hoped district officials would bring current teachers up to that level.

She didn't expect the district to dock the pay of the newer teachers. That's effectively what the district announced it would do Tuesday.

"There are so many people who are so afraid to say something, and they don't understand their pay schedule," said Westbrook. "I think that the district is backpedaling."

Westbrook, 50, is a civics teacher at Lee Middle School. She was hired in 2012-13, and came to Manatee County with teaching experience from private schools, but not all her years in private school transferred into experience years for Manatee County. After realizing a teacher hired this year at Lee made money than her, even though they had the same type of degree and same years of experience, she began to question district pay scales.

Westbrook said she wasn't getting any traction with her concern after speaking to human resources officials and the Manatee Education Association, the teachers union, so she took it a step further.

She brought the issue to the school board in March.

The district announced Tuesday that 174 teachers were overpaid when hired for the 2015-16 academic year because of a mistake in a district salary matrix. The district and the union announced the teachers would continue to be paid the same rate for the rest of the 2015-16 school year but would be returned to the proper -- albeit lower -- salary for 2016-17.

That decision lowered Jason Memmer's paycheck to the tune of about $1,700. Memmer, 31, is the civics teacher at Lee whom Westbrook referred to in her complaint. He was hired for the 2015-16 school year and came to Manatee County from Pinellas County with experience in public and private schools.

"As a teacher, it's really deflating," Memmer said. "I really dislike the way it was done."

Memmer and other district teachers have already signed letters of intent indicating whether they want to return next year.

Memmer does want to return despite the lower pay. He says he loves his job working with students and wants to continue working at Lee Middle School.

Kestana Phommalee, an intensive reading teacher at Johnson Middle School, said she feels exactly the same way. After 17 years teaching in Ohio, Phommalee was teaching higher education courses online for a business in Tampa before she decided to return to a traditional classroom. She was hired at Johnson for the 2015-16 school year and, after a month of commuting, Phommalee, 47, moved to Bradenton. Even though she worked in Ohio for so long, the district doesn't count all her previous experience, so Phommalee knew she'd take a pay cut regardless.

She signed on with the district for $43,700 a year, got a small bump midyear through contract negotiations, and found out Tuesday her pay would drop to $41,610 next year.

"I love being here but this is very sad and disappointing and this was a shock to me," she said.

Phommalee hadn't seen previous coverage or heard some teachers were overpaid. She found out about the issue through an email after school Tuesday detailing the district and union agreement.

"I felt like my heart dropped down out of my body and onto the floor when I saw that number," she said.

Like Memmer, Phommalee also said she wishes the district would bring the other teachers up to the number she was making instead of dropping her back down.

Placement error

After the announcement, Memmer wrote to the board voicing his concern.

"Rather than lowering the wages of teachers who were hired at a specific amount, why not raise up those teachers who weren't paid the same? This is an opportunity for you as board members to stand with the teachers who are doing a good job and support them," he wrote.

In response to his email, board Chairwoman Karen Carpenter and Vice Chairman Charlie Kennedy said Memmer raised good concerns and they would work with district staff to come to a different conclusion.

"It would be nice if we could bring everyone's pay up to the level of the 147 who were paid too much," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said he would ask staff during the April 26 board meeting about how it would affect the budget if they were to try to go down that road. In her email, Carpenter said she would discuss the issue with Superintendent Diana Greene and MEA head Pat Barber.

The solution was negotiated between the district and the union, said Sarah Brown, executive director of human resources for the school district. The affected salary change range for teachers is between $300 and $3,000. The MEA union board approved the solution to return teachers to the proper placement next year, Brown said.

Legislation in 2011 in Florida mandated districts create a performance pay system for teachers by 2014. The model allows teachers to have their base salary increase after good evaluations. That piece hasn't been implemented yet across the state or in Manatee County.

Teachers who worked in districts before the change were allowed to decide whether to go to the performance pay system or stay on the old pay schedule, where pay increased based on years of service. The Manatee County School District has one pay schedule, called the grandfathered pay schedule, for teachers who chose to remain on the old system, and the performance pay schedule, for teachers who moved over to the new model.

New teachers are automatically put on the performance pay schedule.

Since the performance piece hasn't been implemented yet, the pay schedules remain identical.

An error in the performance pay placement chart, used to determine where newly hired teachers with experience should be placed, caused the mistake, Brown said. The previous grandfathered pay schedule used to have different bumps in pay based on years of experience with some years providing a bigger bump up in pay than others, which has since been adjusted to be equal increases every time.

When the conversion to make the performance pay placement chart for the 2015-16 year was created, those larger increases, equalized on the grandfathered chart, were not taken into account for the performance pay chart.

The first error was for teachers coming in with three or four years of experience and it compounded further up the placement chart from there, which is why the fix to the problem varies from teacher to teacher.

"We understand it can be disheartening," Brown said. "At the same time, we need to make sure we appropriately placed them where the salary schedule would have had them."

A memorandum of understanding between the district and union was sent to Greene before the announcement, but the item did not have to go before the school board for approval, Brown said. Brown said she is confident the problem has been fixed and will not happen again.

'It doesn't make any sense'

Horizons Academy math teacher Michael Tierney said the underlying issue is a confusing pay scale in Manatee County, and a lack of support and clarity from the union.

Tierney read about Westbrook's concern in the paper and it hit home. He said he brought his issue up in August and hasn't been able to get a straight answer from the union. He, too, says he is not paid the same as newly hired teachers with the same amount of experience.

"I, and others, don't understand what's going on. I have my documentation," he said. "It doesn't make any sense."

Tierney, 48, came to Manatee County in the 2014-15 school year from DeSoto County schools. He teaches seventh- and eighth-grade math at Horizons, an alternative school. Tierney said he would feel awful if he were Westbrook or one of the 174 teacher who will lose pay next year.

"Somebody opened up a can of worms and it didn't go the way it was supposed to," Tierney said. "We just want to be paid fairly."

Tierney said he is so frustrated with this system he pulled out of the union. As with many teachers, Tierney said he doesn't do the job for the money and won't let the salary issue affect his work in the classroom.

"I'm not going to take away from the kids. I'm not going to do a lesser job," he said. "I'm going to do everything I can to make sure these kids succeed but why am I not being compensated? I just want to make sure my pay is correct."

That's what Westbrook wanted, too. And now, with the district announcement of the error, Westbrook says a whole new issue is at stake. For the 2015-16 school year, Westbrook, a woman, was paid less than Memmer, a man, to do the exact same job.

"That's job discrimination in the workplace," she said.

Meghin Delaney, education reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7081. Follow her on Twitter@MeghinDelaney.

This story was originally published April 16, 2016 at 7:12 PM with the headline "Salary errors leave Manatee County teachers 'disheartened'."