Teachers, exempt & salaried
Ki
27 Posts
I work for a nonprofit that is beginning a new pre-school program. We would like the teachers to be exempt, salaried employees. We are trying to work out how their pay will work, and I'm curious as to whether or not our pay plan will affect their exempt status, or have other unintended consequences. So please bear with me as I stumble through our tentative plan, and let me know what you think. Also, if any of you employ salaried, exempt teachers that are not under a union contract, I would be interested in seeing your policies.
Teachers will be assigned 209 days to work, primarily during the school year with a couple work days during the summer. They will be paid their salary over the course of the full year. The are not contracted. (We need to pay salaries through the summer because of our benefits.)
New teachers will begin receiving pay on July 1 (the beginning of our fiscal year) even though they don't really begin work until mid-August. So if they should terminate at the end of September, they will have been paid more than they actually earned, and would be required to pay our company back based on the number of days they had actually worked compared to whay they were paid. If they would terminate in April, we would owe them an extra amount of pay since they have worked more days than they have been paid.
Teachers will be assigned 209 days to work, primarily during the school year with a couple work days during the summer. They will be paid their salary over the course of the full year. The are not contracted. (We need to pay salaries through the summer because of our benefits.)
New teachers will begin receiving pay on July 1 (the beginning of our fiscal year) even though they don't really begin work until mid-August. So if they should terminate at the end of September, they will have been paid more than they actually earned, and would be required to pay our company back based on the number of days they had actually worked compared to whay they were paid. If they would terminate in April, we would owe them an extra amount of pay since they have worked more days than they have been paid.
Comments
None of our teachers qualify to be exempt. Their base pay doesn't meet the salary requirement, so that is clear for us, but they don't meet any of the other exempt requirements anyway. We do not require greater than a high school diploma/equivalent, we provide teachers with the curriculum, they implement it, they can enhance it as long as the basic curriculum is followed.
Do your teachers meet the "learned professional" exemption?
I apologize for answering your question with another question. Just curious. x:-)
Please let me know if you think otherwise.
I'm sorry I can't help you with your original question, however.
"Employees designated as Full-time Certified Teaching Employees will be paid their salary over the course of a full year. However, actual earnings are determined based on days worked. A Full-time Certified Teaching Employee that terminates mid-year will be compensated by LCSS, or owe LCSS, based on a comparison of days worked to days paid in the fiscal year (July 1 - June 30). (For example, a Full-time Certified Teaching Employee that terminates in mid-September, and has worked 25 days, but has been paid a salary since July 1st, and so has been paid for what amounts to 43 days of work, will owe the difference to LCSS. A Full-time Certified Teaching Employee that terminates at the end of March after working 160 days, but only having been paid for 155 days, will receive the pay for the additional 5 days in his/her final paycheck.)"
I welcome any suggestions/comments. Employees will have to sign a statement agreeing to repay the company or have their final paycheck reduced if they owe money when they terminate. I don't think that should affect their exempt status because we would be deducting for full days not actually worked.
Out of curiosity, how do you recover the overpayment in your example? An employee works 25 days but has been paid for 43. That would be too much $ to take from a final check.
I apologize if that is a dumb question - it's just a new concept to me.
I'm not sure how well we'll be able to enforce it, so I hope it doesn't happen much. But I'm afraid a teacher will get a last minute job offer from a public school, which pays several thousand better than us, and then they'll leave in mid-August, having never worked a day but collected pay for that school year since July 1st. That's a lot to pay back.
If your turnover isn't high, then it's probably not much of a risk. x:-)