Must Board re-vote on Employee Bonus?

$1,500 Gross Income is NOT the same as $1,000 net-afer-taxes.

Will the Richland 2 school board have to vote again on the bonus for full-time and part-time staff?

The error made is not minor.

In the Board packet was a Budget Recommendation for a full-time bonus of $1,580 and a part-time bonus of $789 to permanent employees.

However, the agenda (prepared by the superintendent and the chair), the superintendent's explanation of the bonuses, and trustee-elect McKie's Motion were all wrong. They did not follow the written document that had been presented to the board and which was shown to the public during the discussion.

The superintendent talked about a $1,000 bonus "net after taxes" to full-time permanent employees. That is NOT the same as a $1,580 bonus. He referred to a $500 bonus "net after taxes" to part-time permanent employees.

Anyone with an accounting or tax background quickly understands the difference. 

Voting on (promising) a specific dollar-amount "net after taxes" means the District will have to gross-up each employee's income to yield the amount promised. That's a huge amount of accounting work.

IRS is not going to say, "Oh, that's just a technicality." The District's C.F.O. will understand the problem. I can fully appreciate why he wouldn't have interruprted his boss on Tuesday night to correct him. But that would have been the right time.

How will the District fix this? Will the board have to re-consider the bonus at the next regular meeting and then approve a correctly-worded Motion?

WOW! Don't miss this part (BEDI) of 2/22/2022 Meeting!

An item on the agenda for the February 22, 2022 board meeting involved a proposed revision to Board Policy BEDI News Media Services at Board Meetings.

The crux of the proposed revision was to add a sentence acknowledging "personal legal responsibility" for any statement a board member might make to the media. This is an attempt to silence board members and to chill the atmosphere surrounding their positions.

The agenda item begins at (2:54:24) on the livestream.com/richland2 recording for Feb. 22, 2022 (disregard the erroneous date at the top left of the screen in the recording. The District seems unable to get that error corrected).

Listen to the reasonableness of some of the discussion.

Then listen to Manning's opinions. And those of McKie. And of Caution-Parker. And of Holmes. Manning presumes to disagree with Agostini. That is not the job of the acting chair or of any board member - to disagree with what another trustee has just said. 

If he has a pertinent comment to make, he can do that. He should not exercise privilege or presumption to "disagree"; he should merely state his position on the motion.

Trustee Agostini asked about Teresa Holmes' comment at a recent board meeting when she admonished the public to "Stay woke". And Teresa chimed in (where was Tommy?) with (3:01:14) "I'm going to again reiterate (stumbled over the word) that I do want our community to stay woke." 

That was an unnecessary comment! It had nothing to do with the discussion. If Richland 2 school board had a Parliamentarian, that official would have objected to Holmes' unnecessary, personal, off-topic comment!!!

Manning did state that he agreed with Agostini's motion to remove "personal legal responsibility".

Then a vote was taken on Agostini's secondary motion. The recording secretary did not display the (secondary motion) and a hand-vote was taken. WHY???

There was a procedural failure during the vote. Manning called a hand-vote for those in favor, then opposed (Caution-Parker and McKie raised their hands; Holmes was silent); abstentions? At that point Manning asked, "Dr. Holmes?" Holmes said "Opposed". But the time to vote No had passed! Why wasn't Holmes paying attention? (Was Tommy distracting her?) Manning should not have asked Holmes if she intended to vote. Manning accepted Holmes "Opposed" vote; he should not have done so! Holmes should have been recorded as Not Voting.

The vote on Agostini's secondary motion, to remove "personal legal responsibility" was 

For: Agostini, Manning, McFadden, Scott (4)

Against: Caution-Parker, McKie, Holmes (3)

Maybe they can make BEDI retroactive to January 25. Then let's give very close attention to the remarks of Holmes and Manning to WIS-TV from the courtyard in front of R2i2 on January 28th.