Raises funded by grants

BISD

Our district won a $220,000 grant recently. I just discovered that the writers of the grant, district administrators, included sizeable raises for themselves ($6,000 each) and as it turns out also placed one spouse and a best friend in positions with increases up to $18,000 in salary. The grant will require some extra work, but the ones doing the majority of this extra work, the teachers, are not getting any additional income for their efforts. I think what these administrators have done is horrendous and is going to look really bad to our community not to mention the teachers involved. These are our tax dollars at work. I need to know if I am looking at these pay increases too critcally? None of the raises are in line with our current pay scale. Also, in the past when we have written grants the salary paid by the grant was deducted from what is paid by the district so that the grant helped pay the current salary of the employee. We have never requested huge pay increases in grant funds. Help me look at this situation realistically. The budget of the grant was approved by our State agency.

marc

You have posed some interesting questions. You are a taxpayer, but it also sounds like you have access to information that may not be in the public domain, which may limit your personal recourse. As a non-profit that gets a majority of its funding through various grants, I can tell you that many of our positions are funded by a combination of funds which occasionally may look to be a disproportionate allocation of dollars to effort. All salaries are budgeted for the year, some already with secured funding and some funding based on hopes and dreams. All of that being said, if the grant was approved, I do not think it was illegal. It does sound unusual, but there may be lots of information behind the scenes of which you are not aware. Does your district have a process for raises that was followed? If not, then you may have some recourse.

BISD

WE do have a process in place for raises and it was not followed.

marc

So you have the money, but the raises are not yet authorized. If they are truly out of line, and if there is any public oversight, questions can be raised. We often amend grants when budget line items need to change. Frequently you get 5% leeway with no approval from the granting entity, great variances require written approval. So if the raise dollars are not approved, or approved for lesser amounts, you may be able to amend the budget and use the dollars somewhere else in the program.