DPS Comptroller Supports 11% Pay Increase Plan

The comptroller hired to guide Durham Public Schools out of its classified worker pay quagmire recommends that the district – for now – approve an 11% increase for employees.
That’s according to a presentation containing an update from veteran school finance leader Kerry Crutchfield, submitted ahead of the Board of Education’s Thursday meeting.
In his report, Crutchfield provided observations and findings about the salary study conducted in 2022 that led to the current unsustainable payroll debacle. Classified workers since last summer were paid based on their total experience, while DPS administrators apparently had intended them to be paid based on local experience.
The comptroller’s thoughts on the study:
- Needed and helpful.
- Excellent data on market-based pay in the Durham region.
- Translated that data into classifications that could help DPS attract and retain qualified classified employees.
- Addressed pay range expansion in lower pay grades after the state’s mandatory $15 per hour minimum compressed them.
But the study fell short, Crutchfield noted, by lacking an estimated cost of implementation or a recommended implementation plan.
The district’s previous schedules and the salary study’s recommended schedules differed significantly for purposes of implementation. Crutchfield indicated that previous salary schedules had experience step increments average 0.85%, while the new schedules had pay step increments of 1.5%.
“The difference compounded over 30-plus step schedules creates pay ranges approximately double the size of the previous pay ranges,” Crutchfield wrote. “Using experience steps earned at 0.85% to place employees on a schedule with 1.5% experience steps is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole.”
Nothing using prior experience would yield an appropriate result, he said, “not year-for-year as the study was implemented, and not state longevity years as alternatively suggested.”
The goal, in Crutchfield’s view, should have been to give all classified employees whose pay was below market a market-based boost. Instead, some employees with more than 20 years of experience got increases of as much as 35% when their pay was only 10% below market as it was.
“The result was inevitable,” he wrote. “The cost of the implementation plan was not sustainable within the current DPS budget.”
What’s next? First, the district needs a new market-based implementation plan, according to Crutchfield. Based on his more than 40 years of salary administration experience, he urged that any new plan:
- Be prospective, not retroactive, and not require repayments.
- Have an implementation date far enough out that all employees can be notified of their new pay amount at least one month in advance.
On Thursday, he noted, the board is considering two interim plans for the rest of this fiscal year, including a 15% increase over 2022-23 salaries or 11% over 2022-23. Crutchfield pushed for 11% because it’s closer to what the district can afford within the current budget. Also, if DPS opted for 15%, some employees might see their raises vanish after the implementation of a new salary schedule.
In his report, Crutchfield offered to work on a permanent implementation plan, with an eye toward delivering it for Board of Education review by early March.
He also recommended that, going forward:
- Salary schedules get board approval.
- Reclassifications should be guided by board policy or regulation.
- If there’s no plan to reverse the reclassification implementation and require repayments, the board should formally approve the new schedules and the current implementation for whatever period of time it remains in place.
- The board should formally approve any revised implementation plan and its effective date.
Crutchfield urged approval of a new salary schedule and implementation plan that could go into effect July 1 and that employees should be told their 2024-25 pay rates before the end of this school year.
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