Questions raised over school board salaries

SASKATOON – With the countdown on until the new school year begins the spotlight has turned to the Saskatoon Public School division and its salaries.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has expressed concern with a significant jump in employees pay.

Figures show that in 2010-11, 196 employees were earning in excess of $80,000 a year, the following year the number of staff earning that much jumped to 714.

“The bottom line is the public is paying for all these salaries and benefits and one of the problems we’ve seen is that there’s a huge gap between what government employees are making and everyone that works outside the government,” said Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Colin Craig.

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But the school board says it’s because teachers were back paid after negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement.

“They received a wage increase of 4 per cent in 2010-11 and 3.5 per cent in 2011-12 and that was all paid in what’s known as retroactive pay within one year so that’s the reason why there seems to be this huge jump,” said Saskatoon Public Schools Superintendent of Human Resources, Jaime Valentine.

Another stand out figure shows the highest paid person earned between $180,000 and $190,000 in 2010-11 but in 2011-12 their pay soared to between $250,000 and $260,000.

“That was an exceptional circumstance, that was our former director of education who retired and the big jump in his salary was an accumulated vacation payout,” said Valentine.

Craig says there are ways to avoid those huge payouts.

“One thing that school boards could do that other organizations do is not allow employees to build up holidays and so forth for years and years and years, you have to use them and that avoids those big costs,” he said.

While the school division admits the figures may appear to be shocking it says it’s just an anomaly and when the latest figures are released come fall there’ll be a much more natural progression in pay increases.

“Tax payers are certainly right to question how their money is spent and if something seems untoward we’re more than willing to help them understand where their money is going,” said Valentine.

“I would hope most tax payers realize that educators, people working with their children aren’t overpaid,” he added.