SD pay flap goes to court

Posted: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 9:04 pm

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The Sioux Falls School District is asking a judge to decide whether it underpaid its teacher’s aides, cooks and custodians during the 2008-09 school year.
Two unions dispute the district’s claim that a change in state law allowed it to give smaller raises to nonteachers than it gave to teachers.
Sioux Falls teachers got a 3 percent wage hike that year and nonteachers, 2.5 percent. In May, the South Dakota Department of Labor ordered the district to pay nonteachers the half-percent difference.
The district has now taken the matter to court.
Maynard Magnuson, associate director of the union local representing 168 custodians and maintenance workers in the district, said he does not understand why the district wants to draw out the legal battle. For custodians, the raise amounts to about 8 cents an hour per employee, he said.
“That 8 cents to my guys is a lot of money,” Magnuson said. “For them, it’s nothing.”
The school district will not comment on issues in litigation, spokesman Ben Schumacher said.
In addition to the 168 custodians, there are about 150 food service employees and 350 teacher’s aides eligible for the extra half-percent raise, said Jan Dalseide, president of the Sioux Falls Education Assistants Association.
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Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com
Published in The Messenger 6.23.10