Rockwood Nurses May Ask for 'Pay Equity' With Teachers

When the teachers and administrative staff sought pay raises from the Rockwood School Board earlier this year, there was also one more group who considered going before the board with a similar request – the district’s nurses.

However, they opted instead to wait, with their request likely to come later this year and likely to include a request for equalizing in pay with the district’s teachers, according to La Salle Springs Middle School Nurse Dottie Bardon.

“We have long advocated an internal equity measure were nurses won’t be paid less than teachers,” Bardon said.

The most recent contract for nurses, negotiated in 2012, includes a salary schedule that sets starting pay for a registered nurse (RN) with no experience at $28,000. A teacher at Rockwood with a BA degree and no experience, by contrast, started at $39,237 for the 2012-13 school year.

Instead, Bardon and her fellow nurses decided to take some time to lay the groundwork for any eventual talks by explaining what they do and how important it is to the district’s students, which they did during a presentation before the Rockwood School Board at a June 20th meeting.

 “We do anything a student requires to keep them in school, that’s our goal,” said Geggie Elementary School nurse Mary Kluba.

They brought with them equipment, including an automated external defibrillator and Epipens , and told stories of the students they had helped, from kids who are diabetics to those with severe allergies.

Increasingly, they are dealing with mental health problems as well as physical ones and are trained to know the signs for students who may be at high-risk for suicide.

“We have brought our show and tell,” Bardon said. “We hope this means ... that when we do come back before you later in the school year, you won’t be surprised with what we ask for.”

Bardon noted that they had decided it “wasn’t in your best interest or ours” to press their case earlier this spring, when teachers and administrators were granted pay hikes that added $2.1 million to the district’s budget.