DUBOIS – The auditorium was nearly packed full of members of the DuBois Education Support Professional Association at Wednesday night’s meeting of the DuBois Area School Board.
Members of DESPA wanted answer to many questions. Sandy Kiehlmeier, DESPA president, brought up a letter she sent to Sharon Kirk, superintendent, regarding payroll issues. Kirk said she received the letter, and that there was a clarification she wanted to make.
DESPA has been working without a contract for over three years now, and went on strike on Oct. 5. They returned to work after reaching an agreement before an motion for injunctive relief was to be heard on Oct. 17.
Part of the issue at hand stemmed from an arbitrator’s ruling moving the DESPA workers from 1,600 hours to 1,300 hours, as per their old contract. That, coupled with the workers receiving 26 equal pays and the nine days DESPA members were off during the strike contributed to some of them being overpayed.
An example might be a person working 1640 hours with equal payments for 26 pays. Say the person works 343 hours, but is paid for 441.5.
To remedy this, the district simply did not pay give the workers a paycheck who had been overpayed.
“Once the actual hours worked are equal to actual pay received by each employee the employee will be paid by time card,” read an example page passed out to the press by Kirk.
In some instances, some workers were overpayed by as much as $1,200.
Kirk said that the issue was discussed between the school board’s and DESPA’s counsel at court on Oct. 17.
“It was said in plain language,” said Ed Ferraro, solicitor for the school district.
Kiehlmeier said she was unaware of these talks. Kiehlmeier and other DESPA members argued that it was unfair to pay the overpayed workers little or not at all until the overpayment is taken care of.
Kirk said that she felt the pays were an issue that could be worked out.