The school board discussed a possible agreement between the Washoe County School District and education professionals, with the goal of boosting pay rates and addressing the critical labor shortage they're seeing district wide.
They've been able to recruit 79 transportation employees, 72 for nutrition services and 90 for housekeeping. They still need 47 more bus drivers to reach a capacity to where they can continue the "Hub System" for bus driving routes. For these labor shortage areas, they discussed including base compensation adjustments, COVID differentials, and new hire, referral and retention incentives.
Last Friday during the Washoe County School District Briefing they mentioned how they were seeing an increase in absences due to students not being able to get to school.
Tonight they chose not to make a motion, rather they decided to continue to negotiate. Dr. Angie Taylor, the President of the WCSD Board of Trustees says "What we're negotiating for is to keep the great employees that we have and to attract more. And that means we know we want to be able to pay them more, and that's a necessity, but how do we get there? That's the work."
