The Durham Public Schools Board of Education made a budget allocation of $4.5 million to help pay for a financial mistake that impacted hundreds of district employees.

What You Need To Know

  • In October, over 1,000 Durham Public Schools classified workers received emails, showing an increase in their salaries

  • Staff received a new email announcing a policy change impacting their pay about two weeks ago

  • DPS employees rallied Thursday over concerns about pay and staffing

Bus drivers, custodians, occupational therapists and other positions were among those impacted. The board also took formal action to make sure none of those employees would have to pay back any of the money they were given for their salaries from July to December. 

Hundreds of people swamped a meeting Thursday evening as the board gave its decision on the pay dispute. At least 50 people spoke during the public comment portion as the meeting ran well into the night. 

After the board’s decision, staff impacted said they still had questions and remained unhappy.

“It does not help people budget for the rest of the year. And it doesn’t really do anything to truly regain our trust,” said Molly Bagby, an occupational therapist with Durham Public Schools.

The board promised to have additional public meetings about the issue, and that an outside agency will be investigating how the financial mistake happened.

Durham Public Schools elementary school staff say one minute they were getting paid a livable wage and the next that salary was cut with no real explanation.

Staff says there is not an issue of overpayment but an issue of policy change and how the district is counting years of experience.

“The word overpayment is disrespectful, and it's gaslighting because it's untrue,”  Bagby said ahead of the Thursday night meeting.

Bagby has been with DPS for the last eight years and has worked as an occupational therapist in schools for 14 years.

She says at first the district paid employees what they said they would but then that all changed.

“The district changed its mind and changed those years of experience, which affected our pay over a weekend,” Bagby said.

Bagby said staff received an email two weeks ago with revised salaries — which doesn’t reflect their years of experience, only their years with Durham Public Schools. She says the pay cut is demoralizing.

“We're already understaffed and overworked,” said the therapist. 

Sterling Torain, an instructional assistant for Pearsontown Elementary School says this pay cut came out of nowhere, and he’s losing hundreds of dollars each month.

“We have children. I mean, all kinds of things that we have to take care of on a weekly, daily basis, and we're not even going to be able to do that,” Torain said.

Bagby said she went from getting paid for 14 years of experience to now eight, and Torain said his years went to zero.

“I should be around step 13,” Torain said.

With a pay decrease impacting the district, some staff haven’t returned to work.

“Administration's been having to clean bathrooms because, you know, they don't want to call in replacement workers, but the jobs still need to be,” Bagby said.

Bagby says she and others are seeking legal representation, because she wants to be protected in the future. 

Torain says he is trying to give the district an opportunity to right their wrongs, and he hopes to see the wages they were promised reinstated.

Spectrum News 1 received a statement from the DPS Board of Education, regarding the Classification Compensation Study from BOE Chair Bettina Umstead on Monday afternoon: 

"Let me start by acknowledging the implementation of the salary schedule has adversely impacted the entire DPS family. I want to issue a sincere apology on behalf of the DPS Board of Education. We are sorry for the harm caused and understand there is frustration among employees who were affected, as well as throughout our DPS community. I want to be clear that we value each and every one of our employees, and that we are working hard to resolve this situation, to understand how this happened and how it can be avoided in the future, and to earn back your trust.

Our Board will be retaining an outside financial consultant to review every aspect of this matter. We, as a Board, have also requested that our attorneys investigate this situation to understand what happened so the Board can take all required actions to properly rectify the issue.

We have asked the administration to identify sufficient funds by Thursday’s Board meeting that will allow employees to keep all pay received through December 31, 2023, and to be paid at the same rate for January 2024. The Board will provide an update on Thursday, January 25, at 6:30 p.m. at our regularly scheduled Board meeting.

Separately, the Board has heard our employees’ concerns regarding the use of years of service in any compensation plan adopted by the Board. The Board is working diligently to address this concern.

The Board recognizes that our classified employees are the heartbeat of our school system. To our classified employees, you do the tireless work that is vital to the education of our students and our mission. I know this has been hard for everyone in our Durham community, but what I love about Durham is that we face our challenges straight on and collectively work to find solutions, which our Board is committed to doing in this situation.