McAllen ISD’s leadership was split on how fast to pay out employee retention fund stipends from the federal government Monday evening.
Those stipends, made up of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief III funds, are earmarked to be paid out to all full-time employees in two $1,000 sums, one in December of 2022 and one a year later.
Those funds will follow a $3,000 retention stipend the district paid out last month.
But a faster payout for that money would reward teachers working through the pandemic, the district’s administration and two trustees said at a meeting Monday.
On the other hand, a majority of the board seemed skeptical that paying out so much money so fast would actually keep employees around long term, and criticized the call for a decision on that topic in what they felt wasn’t enough time.
The board ultimately nixed the proposal in a 2-4 vote.
Had the board approved consolidating those stipends and accelerated the timeline, that money could have hit bank accounts of eligible employees as soon as March 11.
The district’s administration recommended accelerating those two planned payouts, saying essentially that staff will be exposed to more COVID-19 and the occupational stress that tends to accompany it.
“The $2,000 — I know that some people are talking about paid COVID days — this is in lieu of that, (that) way it’s everybody, it’s consistent across the board,” Assistant Superintendent Todd Miller said, referencing extended leave policies for isolated employees that other school boards in the county began approving shortly after the beginning of the semester.
Later in the meeting, however, Miller retracted that comment, saying he had misspoken.
In a statement Tuesday, the district echoed that retraction, saying that COVID leave policy and the stipend payouts are different things.
Superintendent J.A. Gonzalez, however, did talk about those topics as being related in that meeting.
He said that additional COVID leave at the district would not be applied retroactively, and that essentially the only individuals who would benefit from a policy like that would be the ones infected after it was implemented.
“A more equitable way would be to give them the $5,000 up front because of the work that they’ve been doing, and we’re not even talking about the five extra days at this point,” he said.
MISD’s AFT union has called for a COVID leave policy, a policy other districts in the county have adopted this semester.
Some trustees seemed hazy about how COVID leave relates to an accelerated timeline for payouts; the district’s official stance, despite comments at the meeting, is that there is no relation.
Whatever the official stance, trustees Tony Forina and Marco Suarez voted for accelerating the payment.
Employees, Suarez said, need that money now.
“Originally this was called a retention stipend,” he said. “But we’re not at the point where we can wait till June or two years from now; we’re at a point where people are leaving this profession because they no longer feel safe. And if we walked into empty classrooms in January, it’s going to be no different in March after spring break.”
Suarez later clarified that he was referring to classrooms being empty of students.
A majority of the board voted against accelerating the payment, citing concerns over how late the item had been added to their agenda and over how an early payout would de-incentive teachers over the long run.
During a hearing for the item, Clarissa Riojas, a teacher and AFT member at the district, said she and her colleagues deserve both COVID leave pay and an incentive stipend.
“Teachers have been doing the work since March 2020,” she said. “We’re tired. I came back from winter break, half of my students were missing, so many of my colleagues were gone. We’re exhausted.”
