Fulton Public School board members are deciding how to tackle minimum wage.
"We voted not to implement it in December, and it is optional," Superintendent Jacque Cowherd said during Wednesday evening's board of education meeting. "My concern is that if we don't implement minimum wage, we won't be able to hire people."
Proposition B passed in Missouri last year. The measure increases Missouri's minimum wage by 85 cents per hour per year until 2023, when the state minimum wage will be fixed at $12. In 2020, Missouri's minimum wage will be defined at $9.45 per hour.
District jobs for which first-year workers currently make less than $9.45 per hour include food service workers, custodians, some paraprofessionals, the health aide, child care workers and transportation aides.
"An exemption to the minimum wage applies to the school district because we're a political subdivision," school board member Emily Omohundro explained.
During a recent visit to Missouri's state Capitol, she heard about recently introduced legislation that, if passed, could remove the exemption for school districts, she said.
"I believe the legislation was introduced by a Democrat, so I'm not sure how far it will get," she said.
Board members expressed support during the meeting for increasing the district's minimum wage.
"It's my opinion and my strong belief that we should find a way to fund Proposition B," board member Jackie Pritchett said. "We owe our support staff to take the time to look at this."
The district has several options for how it could implement the increased minimum wage. The matter is complicated by the way wages work in the district. Those hired into each position have a starting wage, which increases by percentage each year according to a pay schedule.
The district could implement the new minimum wage without changing the rest of the schedule, which could leave some staff with more experience being paid almost the same amount as first-year employees.
Or, the district could apply an increase to the entire pay schedule, which Cowherd said would cost about $235,000 extra in wages during the 2019-20 school year. As board members pointed out, if the district applied that same increase each year until 2023, that'll be another $235,000 extra for each of those years.
"Everyone (in the conference) is saying, 'What are we going to do?'" Cowherd said.
His suggestion to the board was to implement the first option: increasing the minimum wage without otherwise changing the pay schedule.
"We will see some salary compression," he admitted.
Board members ultimately decided they needed more time to crunch numbers and consider the options before making a decision. Following a motion from Pritchett, the board scheduled a work session from 5:30-7 p.m. Feb. 27 at the FPS central office.