UPDATED: 10:25 p.m.
Sullivan County’s 1,665 teachers and other school personnel will find a nice surprise in their stockings this holiday season after school officials approved plans to give them a bonus of up to $500 by the end of the year.
During its Monday meeting, the Sullivan County Board of Education voted 7-0 in favor of paying the 1,450 full-time employees a $500 bonus and 215 part-time employees a $250 bonus, Director of Schools Jubal Yennie said.
“The board wanted to demonstrate to its employees that they appreciate them,” Yennie said, adding that budget pressures have kept the school system from giving employees a raise for the past two years.
Paying the year-end bonuses will cost the school system about $780,000 this year, the director of schools said.
Most of this money will come from the school system’s share of a $26 billion state aid package that the U.S. House of Representatives passed when it came back for a special one-day session during its August recess.
That aid package – opposed by U.S. Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., and supported by U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. – gave states $10 billion worth of new education funding and $16 billion to spend on Medicaid by raising taxes on companies that do business overseas and cutting a planned food stamp program funding increase that was scheduled for 2014.
The school system also will pay the bonuses with money it expects to save after the Tennessee Department of Education stopped requiring school systems to pay their employees’ Medicare supplemental insurance premiums. Those premiums cost the school system $50,000 a month, Yennie said.
The school system’s employees are not the only government employees in the county who will be getting a bonus this year.
In November, the Sullivan County Commission asked each of its department heads to give employees a bonus of up to $500 using money already in their budgets for the current fiscal year.
County Payroll and Personnel Manager Gayvern Moore said all county department heads were able to pay their employees some type of a Christmas bonus. The total bonus package for non-school system personnel cost the county $461,000, Moore said, including payments for Medicare, Social Security and other benefits.
gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518
The Sullivan County Board of Education voted Monday night to give all employees a performance bonus by year's end.
All full-time school employees will receive a $500 performance bonus, and all part-timers will see an extra $250 dollars.
School workers received no raises last year from the state or the county, and the previous year the county could only afford to give them a quarter-of-a-percent raise.
"It'll probably go to sending my daughter to college and my son to college one of these days, since it's something extra," said Leslie Carr, and English teacher at Blountville Middle School.
The county found most of the funding for the bonuses from some federal stimulus dollars given to the state of Tennessee to help school systems save jobs during the recession.
For a full video report, click play above.
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