Transportation employees with the West Fargo Public School district held a meeting with administration officials this morning about their growing concerns over wages and benefits.
Media were not allowed into the meeting, prompting the employees to initially refuse to meet with administration. But the drivers then spoke with reporters following a nearly hour-long meeting with administration.
Karen Kraft is a Special Education Paraprofessional. She says drivers were promised in February of last year that administration would do what they could to increase wages, but that did not happen. She says the drivers have been waiting for a pay increase for six years, as the cost of insurance has also gone up. She also says drivers will drive more than 4,000 kids more than a million miles over the course of the next school year – and they are short ten employees.
"There was also a comment made by someone in administration, that we can't expect to make a living doing this job. For many of us, it is. Those of us who have surpassed the wage steps are actually going backwards in pay due to the increase in insurance costs. This has been happening for the past six years."
Kenneth Steiner is Operation Supervisor. He says transportation employees are still waiting for a resolution following the meeting this morning.
"During the meeting, admin explained their position to us - which is that there is no funding available to increase our wage structure in this department. They said they were under the impression that we were considering not showing up for the first day of school, or not showing up at some point. We assured them that that was never our intent, and we had never said that. They were very clear that if we choose to do some version of that, there will be termination. We assured them that's not our intent."
Steiner says the administration is waiting to hear back on a twelve week market study that should determine what competitive wages for the drivers would be. Kraft says she’s hoping some trust can be rebuilt between administration and the drivers.
Beth Slette is Superintendent of West Fargo Public Schools.
"I'm feeling very optimistic that we can collaborate in the future, to ensure that all of our staff - transportation and otherwise - are being paid at the very best compensation we are able to do within our budgets. And I'm committed to working with them to solve the problems that we have."
School begins this Thursday in West Fargo.
