Staff in the Eureka Springs School District will have a little extra cash in their pockets for the holiday season.
At its regular monthly meeting Monday, Nov. 13, the school board voted to give one-time bonuses for all staff, and went a step further by rewarding longtime employees.
The board unanimously accepted the recommendation from the district’s Personnel Policy Committee to give all staff on contract a guaranteed $1,000 bonus.
In addition, classified staff will get $50 for every year they’ve been in the district and certified staff, including teachers, will get $50 for every year they’ve been at Eureka Springs plus $50 for every year they’ve been in teaching. The cap will be $3,500, superintendent Bryan Pruitt said, adding that one teacher who has been in Eureka Springs for 30 years will receive the maximum amount.
“The board wanted us to emphasize and reward our experienced teachers a little more,” he said. “With the LEARNS Act, our new teachers were brought up to $50,000, so some of those teachers got a nice, nice raise this year. But, the experienced teachers who were already at $50,000 got a $2,000 raise while some got almost almost a $10,000 raise and in some instances got a little over $10,000.
“So if you’re classified and have been with the district 10 years then the bonus will be $1,500.”
Pruitt said the district has been able to provide holiday bonuses in the nine years he’s been with district. Those bonuses will be deposited Friday, the superintendent said.
“We can’t always guarantee that the bonuses will always happen because you never know about the economy and what could change, but we’re fortunate that we’ve been able to do it each year since I’ve been here,” Pruitt said. “We’re tickled to death to be able to do it for them.”
OTHER BUSINESS
In other action, the board approved spending $153,000 on the annual order of a new school bus, Pruitt said.
“Since COVID, buses have gone up 30 percent in cost,” he said. “I don’t think the value went up but the cost has.”
The district typically orders a new bus each year that the district will receive the following year and will rotate into the fleet while the oldest bus will rotate out, Pruitt said.
“We don’t pay for a bus until they deliver it,” he said. “Actually, the bus we bought last year, we still haven’t gotten it. They say any day now.
“We want to keep nice, safe buses that our parents feel comfortable putting their children on knowing they’re safe, so we try to keep our fleet up to date the best we can.”
In other board action, the stipend was increased from $1,500 to $2,000 for coaching soccer, Pruitt said.
“Soccer is actually our biggest sport as far as numbers,” he said. “And so we raised that stipend. We also changed some wording on track. We used to have boys track and girls track, but they all do track together. The stipend for track is the same but we cleaned up the language on that. Now, we have senior high track and junior high track on the stipend schedule.”
