Wake seeks pay raise to retain therapists who aid the vulnerable

A long-requested pay raise is on the table for Wake County school therapists, whose high turnover rate has left some of the district’s most vulnerable students without needed services.

The Wake County school board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a $510,000 plan to raise salaries for both occupational therapists and physical therapists – employees who’ve seen few raises since 2008 and who’ve been lobbying for an increase. The raises could mean $10,000 more a year for veteran occupational therapists, who’ve been leaving in droves.

“We’re thankful to be paid more,” Jamie Wineland, a Wake County school occupational therapist, said of the new pay scale. “But we’re even more thankful that we won’t be losing more experienced occupational therapists. We want the best and brightest to stay here.”

Wake has had to replace 19 occupational therapists who have resigned or retired since July 2013, including eight who’ve resigned since July of this year. Wake has 50 occupational therapists on staff with three positions to be filled.

The resignations have left some special-needs students without occupational therapy services this school year. Matt Dees, a Wake County schools spokesman, said parents were contacted if their child was to go without services during the first nine weeks of school. He said compensatory services will be arranged once staff is in place.

School officials hope the higher pay will stabilize a workforce that’s charged with helping students with disabilities. The turnover has forced Wake to use highly-paid contractors to try to keep up with the demand to provide federally mandated services to special-education students. But unlike staff therapists, the contractors can’t bill Medicaid to get Wake reimbursed.

“We have lost eight (occupational therapists) in a very, very short amount of time, like this school year,” Karen Hamilton, Wake’s assistant superintendent for special education services, told the school board this month. “I think this will not only attract OTs and PTs, but will allow us to retain them once we get them.”

The job that occupational therapists do can be daunting as they have caseloads of 50 or more students spread out over multiple schools. Wineland, who is in her 12th year as an occupational therapist in Wake, said she and her colleagues try to break down the obstacles that impede a child’s access to an education.

Some of Wineland’s students have spacial perception issues in which their brains have difficulty processing what their eyes see. Other students such as John Moorefield, a 9-year-old at River Bend Elementary School in North Raleigh, need help with their upper-body motor skills after having suffered traumatic head injuries.

“Grab the socks,” Wineland said to John during a therapy session as she asked him to point to a picture of socks. “They’re crazy socks.”

Much of Wineland’s work involves finding ways to adapt the school environment for students. This can include using specially adapted sheets of paper and utensils, seat cushions and speech-to-text software. Some students may benefit from wearing weighted vests or blankets that help calm them down.

“We love the children in Wake County,” Wineland said. “We want to work here.”

But Wineland said their ability to work for Wake has been challenged by the lack of recent pay raises.

The problem dates back to 2008 when Wake moved the OTs and PTs to a “pay band system” where the therapists are paid within a salary range. Once in a band, annual raises are largely dependent on what the state provides. Not including one-time bonuses, the only state raises for the therapists were 1.2 percent in 2012 and $500 in 2014.

New occupational therapists are typically hired at salaries less than that those of experienced staff members, who themselves haven’t seen their pay rise much. The resulting salary compression means there’s not much of a difference in pay between newer and experienced employees.

Casey Wentz, a Cary attorney and husband of one of the district’s occupational therapists, said a Wake OT with 10 years of experience only makes $63 more per month than a first-year employee being paid $4,523 a month.

The occupational therapists launched a campaign last spring to urge the school board to raise the salaries for them and the physical therapists. But raises were not included in the school board’s original budget request.

But on Oct. 6, school administrators presented a plan to return to a “step system” where occupational therapists and physical therapists are paid based on years of experience with raises every two to three years. Teachers are also paid on a step system.

Hamilton, the Wake assistant superintendent, told the board it made sense to switch because the district is losing occupational therapists to other school systems that are using a step system.

“When I do exit surveys of folks leaving the district, what they express is they love Wake County,” she said. “They’re leaving because they can make more money elsewhere.”

All 18,000 school employees – teachers and non-teachers – will get raises this year because of a record $44.6 million increase in funding from the Wake County Board of Commissioners. But the school board told the staff to come back Tuesday with a way to also fund the new pay scale for occupational therapists and physical therapists.

“We need to recruit and retain high-quality staff across our district, and we’re making decisions to do just that,” said school board Chairwoman Christine Kushner.

The raises will vary, with more experienced employees typically seeing the bigger raises. For instance, occupational therapists with 13 years of experience would see their salaries rise by nearly $1,000 a month to $5,581.

“We’re proud of our work in raising the issue, and we’re so thankful the Board of Education will do something about it,” said Wineland, the occupational therapist.

Wentz called the new pay scale a good first step, especially for experienced occupational therapists. But Wentz said the raises still aren’t enough for the less experienced therapists.

“I’m concerned that it won’t do as much as they hope,” Wentz said. “It’s not going to attract new and fresh talent coming to Wake County.”

This story was originally published October 18, 2015 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Wake seeks pay raise to retain therapists who aid the vulnerable."