WHAT CAN WE DO? MEETING TO DISCUSS RESPONSES

If you are as outraged as we are about the excess money going to the privileged few in central office (not everyone there), then come on down to Big Dawg's Restaurant Tuesday, October 14 at 5:30 p.m. Together, we'll explore all options available to end these unfair practices!

In case you missed the Rio Grande Sun article, HERE ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS from the article by Jose de Wit, SUN Staff Writer:

A select group of Española School District central office employees has raked in thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars in additional pay over the past two years, even as other employees were targeted for budget-related cuts.

Almost every type of District employee, from cooks to coaches, occasionally receives some kind of additional pay over their regular salary. But roughly 15 employees in the human resources, payroll and business departments, along with one top-level secretary, consistently received overtime and other extra pay ranging from a few hundred dollars to a more than one thousand dollars along with their semi-monthly paychecks.

"It's just a gross amount of money that's being spent," Española School Board member Leonard Valerio said. Superintendent David Cockerham defended the additional pay he gave those employees, suggesting their work is more critical to the District than the work of teachers, principals and custodians. The District spent at least $86,000 last school year and $120,000 the year before in overtime pay for roughly 15 employees in the aforementioned departments, according to payroll records. This school year, the District is on its way to matching those amounts, having already spent in less than three months close to $30,000 in additional pay for the same number of employees. Half those employees made one-fourth to one-half their annual salaries in overtime. Some earned enough additional pay to inflate their salaries to rival those of higher-level administrators.

Business Manager Charlene Sanchez's combined earnings of $83,639 last school year rivaled superintendent salaries in 15 New Mexico school districts, according to the state Education Department's web site. Her earnings of $88,218 the year before were competitive with superintendent salaries in 30 districts.

When Cockerham paid his assistant, Frances Frazier, $24,320 in overtime over her $42,400 annual salary last school year, her combined earnings exceeded the salary of Reading First Director Jeannie Martinez and roughly matched the salaries of Transportation Director Sennie Quintana and Projects Manager Paul Salas, according to payroll records.
Both Sanchez's and Frazier's additional pay adds up to more days of work than seem possible in a year that is only 365 days long.

Sanchez, for example, accumulated $26,428 working "additional days" during the 2006-07 school year, according to payroll records. That figure, divided by her daily rate, amounts to 96 days. To work those days on top of her 260-day contract, Sanchez could have taken no more than nine days off the whole year — including weekends.

Sanchez said it is "entirely possible" she worked 356 days that year. "I work most weekends," she said.

Cockerham agreed. "Sure, I think it's completely possible. Absolutely!" Cockerham said. "I come by 75 percent of the time on weekends to check on them, and they're here. They work real hard, all of them."

At least as of last school year, Sanchez has also been working for Rio Arriba County Treasurer Livia Olguin at a $50-an-hour rate, according to a previous SUN report. She earned roughly half as much additional pay last school year than the year before.

Sanchez also hired her sister, former Española Valley High School nurse Monica Smith, for overtime work. Smith made at least $2,500 in overtime work for the business office, according to payroll documents.

On one occasion this May, Frazier billed the District for 166 hours of overtime over a two-week pay period, payroll records state. In April 2007, she billed 199 overtime hours — which would have put her in the office 20 hours a day, every day, for two weeks.

Time cards attached to those payments suggest they are for overtime accumulated and never paid over several months' time. Frazier said most of her overtime is for time spent at Board meetings, and for hours of work at home transcribing meeting minutes. She said the two large payments are for hours spent at Board meetings that she had neglected to claim before.

All in all, Frazier has made an average of $2,100 a month in overtime the past two years. On at least one occasion, Frazier requested a week of paid leave, then worked through the week at overtime rates, according to time cards.

Cockerham stood by the employees' overtime work, saying it is the only way to keep the District running.

The business and payroll department is short three employees, Cockerham said, so current employees had to step in and pick up the slack. Cockerham claimed all the applications the District has received for the vacant positions the last year and a half were sub-par, incapable even of using a spreadsheet.

"The bottom line: without that overtime, we would not be able to function as a payroll department," Cockerham said. "We don't have the qualified staff." Besides, Cockerham argued, because the overtime is drawn from a pot of money budgeted for the vacant positions, no school, department or program in the District is deprived of funding because of the overtime.

Board Secretary Joann Salazar did not buy Cockerham's explanation.
"Why aren't they hiring other people? In my opinion, they're not hiring them because they're getting the work and they're getting the overtime," Salazar said. "All that about not being able to find someone, I think that's a bunch of baloney."

The amount of money spent on overtime has led Board members to question the legality, or at least the propriety, of such arrangements. And the way overtime pay is distributed has teachers and some administrators crying favoritism.

Hourly employees made most of their extra pay in regular overtime, paid at one-and-a-half times their hourly rates. Administrators, who earn a set salary to work a certain amount of days each year, were compensated more creatively. Four salaried administrators are routinely paid "additional days," a form of compensation that does not exist in District policies, according to payroll records. Accounting manager Carl Stevens, for example, made $8,368 working 30 additional days at $260 each last school year. The year before, Sanchez made $26,000 almost exclusively in additional days, each billed at $275.

Last school year, Sanchez made extra pay by banking off-the-clock work as "annual leave" or vacation days, then selling it back to the District later. Sanchez banked 22 days of annual leave last school year and cashed most of them in this July for $4,860, according to payroll documents.
Salazar said both practices sounded dubious. "I don't think it's normal or even that it's legal. I'd like to see what policy allows (Cockerham) to allow that," Salazar said. "I think it's an abuse. They're still getting paid, no matter what you call it."

State Education Department spokeswoman Beverly Friedman said as long as the District is paying overtime out of its general operational fund, overtime policies are a District matter. Several administrators said some departments get extra work — and pay — lavished on them, while other departments are afraid to request overtime pay for work their employees are doing off the clock.

"I want my piece of the pie, too," high school Principal Bruce Hopmeier said, pointing out that he and the school's three other administrators are not paid overtime for work they do on evenings and weekends.

"I really don't think it's fair," high school Assistant Principal Dolores Guzman said. The Title One and Bilingual departments have each lost an employee over the past two years due to job cuts. Title One Director Evelyn Maruska said she routinely needs to take her work home, but has been denied requests to bank days to her annual leave or get paid additional days — benefits awarded regularly to business office and human resources administrators. When Maruska requests overtime for her two assistants, they are granted a "minimal" amount of time, she said. Bilingual Director Marilyn McBane said her assistant has been granted overtime exactly twice, for four hours each.

"Most of the time, though, I never ask, because it's been made clear that we're not going to get it," McBane said. Cockerham attempted to cut the contract days — and salaries — of administrators and support in Title One, Bilingual and two other departments in April, citing a projected budget shortfall for this school year. Until as recently as Sept. 30, when Cockerham settled a complaint from the District's employee union, transportation department employees risked losing their jobs in January.

Teachers also asked why they don't get overtime for the hours they work off the clock. Like administrators, teachers are paid an annual salary, which also obligates them to attend training events and school functions on evenings, weekends and during the summer. Teachers are not eligible for overtime pay, and while they are sometimes paid a stipend for weekend and summer work, it amounts to half a day's pay or less, Every said.

"My salary comes with an expectation that I'm going to get certain stuff done, within my regular schedule or not, and I'm not going to get paid extra for it. That's why I'm salaried," Española Valley High School math teacher Brian Every said. "But if they're willing to pay salaried administrators overtime, they should be willing to pay teachers overtime as well."

Every, who is also the employee union president, said the situation is often worse for custodians. High school custodian Sylvia Garcia said custodians are often told there's no money — no money for overtime, no money for substitutes, no money for supplies.

"They tell us to do what we can in our eight hours and leave the rest," Garcia said. "I clean it all up anyway, even just on my own time. I just want it to be clean for the students the next morning."

Cockerham dismissed all those employees' complaints, claiming they are not required to work outside their regular working hours. If a custodian chooses to spent extra time cleaning, if a teacher wants to spent a few days of summer vacation preparing her classroom for the next school year, that's great of them, Cockerham said, but it doesn't entitle them to overtime.
Cockerham also argued the central office employees are more entitled to additional pay than teachers or custodians because the administrators' work is more critical to the functioning of the District.

"The question is, is it critical to the operation of the District?" Cockerham asked of custodians' work. "Who's going to complain if they don't get paid? Every employee in the District."

Charles Goodmacher, a representative from the state office of the National Education Association, took issue with Cockerham's attitude. The District's employee union is a chapter of the Association.

"That's just outrageous," Goodmacher said. "When employees who directly serve the students — custodians, teaching assistants — when they're denied that privilege categorically, while certain few in central office are paying themselves overtime, it's simply outrageous."