Knox teachers will get a pay raise and a sick day buyout, under the master teacher contract ratified by the school board Tuesday. “Each of our teachers in Knox Community Schools will receive a base increase on their salary of $1,168,” Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart explains.
He says that under the sick day buyout, teachers will be paid a certain amount of money based on how many sick days they’ve accumulated. “The teachers don’t lose the days,” he explains. “They still get to keep their [for example] 80 sick days, but when they retire, they will not get any benefit in terms of cash for accumulated sick days, as they do now.”
Reichhart says current teachers who had been employed by the school corporation in 2006 will be paid $100 per sick day as part of the buyout, up to a maximum of $6,500. Those hired after 2006 will receive anywhere from $200 to $3,000, depending on how many days they’ve accumulated.
Reichhart says the goal is to eliminate the corporation’s “unfunded liability.” “If every teacher at Knox right now would retire someday with 100 sick days . . . if you have 115 teachers in your district, that would be $747,000 that the school corporation would have to pay out year after year for teachers who are retiring,” he says. “So we wanted to get rid of that because in the future, the idea is we can’t give raises if we have to pay retiring teachers for their buyout days.” He says the buyout will be funded by the $245,000 in remaining proceeds from the school corporation’s 2006 pension bond.
Meanwhile, the number of bereavement days teachers receive has been cut from 10 to five, for the death of an immediate family member. Reichhart says that matches the number received by classified and administrative staff.
