School board OKs $250,000 in retirement buy-outs

The Churchill County School District Board of Trustees recently voted to spend $253,584 to buy out 11 employees who want to retire early.

The district has an early retirement and separation incentive policy that permits the district to buy retirement credits for employees under the Public Employee Benefit System.

The cost to the district includes conversion of unused sick leave to service credit.

Trustees made an exception to the district policy that limits the number of buy-out requests each year to 1.5 percent of the total number of employees. That computes to eight employees this year.

Those leaving the district under the age separation section of the policy include Diane Barger, an instructional assistant at West End Elementary School, RJ Keelan, who teaches third grade at E.C. Best and Martin Pattengale, a maintenance technician.

Three employees are leaving under the retirement incentive portion of the policy. They are Teresa Del Sarto, a first grade teacher at Numa, Linda Hammond, a business and physical education teacher at Churchill County High School, and Sheree Jensen, a physical education teacher at the high school.

The remaining five employees requested buy-outs under the separation incentive plan.

Judy Pratt, principal at Churchill County Junior High School, Sue Smith-Ansotegui, a sixth grade teacher at Lahontan, Joanne Tanner, who teaches reading and speech at the junior high school, Pamela Thompson, a third grade teacher at Northside, and Anna Wright, a high school math teacher, all were approved for the buy-out program.

"With teachers that are leaving that are high-cost employees, we can replace them with lower cost employees," said Gregg Malkovich, assistant superintendent in charge of personnel.

The district's theory is that teachers at the top of the pay scale can be replaced by teachers with less experience who do not earn as much, eventually saving money in salaries.

Trustee Tom Riggins said he is concerned about making exceptions to the policy by approving more than 1.5 percent of the district employees.

"My underlying concern is if we ignore that we're setting a precedent," Riggins said. "I want to make it clear, it's not the intent of the board - from my perspective - to deviate from that."

Before trustees voted to approve the buy-out requests, it was clarified that approving all 11 requests this year was based on special circumstances allowed in the district's policy.

"We don't want to force teachers to stay another year in the classroom if they don't want to," said Board Chairman Greg Koenig. "It's not a financial hardship on the district at this point. In the future it could be."