Lexington 1 school employees get early holiday gift in one-time bonus
Employees of Lexington 1 school district will have a little more cash to spend ahead of the holidays.
The district board of trustees unanimously approved a one-time payment to Lexington 1’s 4,000 employees at a board meeting Tuesday.
District Superintendent Greg Little said each full-time district employee will receive a one-time payment of $1,000. Part-time district employees working less than 30 hours a week and substitutes who worked at least 45 days this semester or last semester will get around $500, Little said.
The payments will come from surplus funds the district saved from unspent operating and travel costs at the height of the pandemic shutdown.
“We closed out the fourth quarter of last school year with savings on power bills, no travel or significant professional development,” said Jeff Salters, the district’s chief operations officer. He estimated the savings add up to $8.4 million.
District employees will see the addition to their checks for Dec. 18, one week before Christmas. Substitutes will receive their payments at the end of the semester. Salters said the payments will be set up so most employees see no tax liability, and those that do will be “minimal,” he said.
The holidays can be stressful enough, Little said, without all the additional stress 2020 has placed on the public school system. “With all the additional job duties they have had to do this year, we wanted to do this as a small token of our appreciation,” the superintendent said.
He highlighted employees who have not only worked to create remote learning plans and sanitize school buildings, but have even worked to keep students fed through the lockdown in the spring and summer.
Board member Jada Garris asked if the payout could also include those district employees who have retired since the beginning of the pandemic in March, but others expressed concern that employees who have served throughout the COVID-19 pandemic wouldn’t want to receive the same payment as those who left.
Salters also raised the point that the district knows it has the most up to date bank information for its current employees.
This story was originally published December 2, 2020 at 8:35 AM.
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