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Monday’s virtual Board of Education meeting.
Part-time workers at New Haven Public Schools will now make a minimum of $14 per hour, thanks to a Monday evening vote by the city’s Board of Education.
School board members took that unanimous vote during their regular bimonthly meeting, held online via Zoom.
The $1‑per-hour raise covers part-time clerical workers, non-unionized paraprofessionals, student workers, and bus monitors.
Supporters of the minimum wage increase framed Monday’s vote as an effort to “keep ahead of the state.” In 2019, Gov. Ned Lamont signed a law requiring the state minimum wage to steadily rise to $15 an hour by 2023. This year, the minimum wage rose to $13 an hour.
Why Not $15?
Chris Peak file photo
BOE member Darnell Goldson.
BOE member Darnell Goldson tried in vain Monday night to raise the part-time worker minimum wage to $15 an hour, rather than following through on Superintendent Iline Tracey’s recommendation of a $1 raise to $14.
“If we don’t do it, we’re going to be back here next year having to do it anyhow,” Goldson said.
That proposed amendment failed. The $14 an hour minimum wage vote passed unanimously.
The board voted based on a part-time pay analysis and data gathered by Chief Financial Officer Linda Hannans. (Click here to read that analysis.)
The data show that a $1 raise will result in a $130,158 increase to the district’s special funds budget. It would cost the budget an extra $260,316 to increase part-time worker wages to $15 an hour, according to the analysis by Hannans.
“If we moved them to $15 per hour we would have students coming in making more than the paraprofessionals that are in the bargaining unit and I didn’t want to open another can of worms going in that direction,” Hannans said Monday.
This pay increase comes after several board members requested from central office a financial analysis of wage increases ranging from $13.50 to $15.50 to see if the budget would allow for the raise.
“We’ve decided that based on where we are it’s best to keep it now at $14 and then later on down the line in a different way we can compensate the $15 as long as it’s not pressure on any of these special funds from which part-time folks are being hired,” Tracey said.
Unionized paraprofessionals currently receive $14.50 per hour, Tracey reported. “If we raise this to $15 for non-unionized workers then that has a ripple effect on the unionized folks who are working $14.50 per hour,” she said.
However, with “built-in pay increases” in union paraprofessional contracts, Tracey said, when the board revisits its wage increase options next year for part-time staff, unionized paraprofessionals will be making more than they currently are. This will allow for part-time workers to also make more while avoiding working the same wages as unionized paraprofessionals.
“The issue with increasing to $15 is that they will be making $0.50 more than the unionized para professionals and the same rate as the skill workers who in some cases teach non-certified classes,” the CFO data analysis document states.
BOE members Tamiko Jackson-McArthur and Goldson argued that part-time staff deserve to be making the same or more than unionized paraprofessionals because they don’t have union benefits.
“So even if they made $14.50 an hour, it’s kind of worth a little more because they get benefits,” Jackson-McArthur said. “I thought that for the people that we were raising to $15 it isn’t even equitable to somebody else who gets $15 because when other people get $15 they have other benefits,” Jackson-McArthur said.
Hannans confirmed that part-time staff do not get vacation or holiday pay.
BOE secretary Edward Joyner argued that the majority of part-time staff are retired teachers with pensions and that “we have to protect our unions.”
“It’s not our job to protect our unions. That why they’re union,” Goldson said. “These folks don’t have a union. They can’t negotiate. They have to depend on us to do it for them.”
The board agreed to work towards implementing another wage increase for part-time staff into the next budget cycle after the vote.
“I’m really hoping we can move it to $15 in the next budget year,” said BOE Vice President Matt Wilcox.
Watch the full meeting here.