OC Commissioners to Meet With Both School Boards in Hillsborough

The Orange County Board of Commissioners meets tonight with the school boards for Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County, in a joint meeting at the Whitted Meeting Facility in Hillsborough.

One of the agenda items for the special meeting will be an update on efforts to pay a living wage to all county and CHCCS district employees.

Effective July 1 of this year, 95 seasonal and temporary county employees received a living-wage increase from $10.97 an hour to $12.76 an hour, as directed by the County Commissioners’ budget for Fiscal Year 2014-15.

The Orange County Board of Education has not yet adopted its budget for the current fiscal year. That’s scheduled to happen from mid-to-late October.

According to a county schools report from the previous school year, non-licensed substitute teachers in Orange County were making $10 per hour for a seven-and-a-half hour workday.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Assistant Superintendent Todd LoFrese reported that a recent three-percent bonus for school employees, made possible by the support of the county, followed 15 years in which the average annual pay increase was a mere 1.8 percent.

In a letter to County Manager Bonnie Hammersley, LoFrese wrote that CHCCS would like to continue paying employees enough to keep up with inflation.

As WCHL recently reported, some employees of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system receive regular food assistance from the Inter-Faith Council Food Pantry in Carrboro.

Tonight’s joint meeting between County Commissioners and the two school systems takes place at 7 o’clock at the Richard Whitted Meeting Facility, located at 300 Tryon Street in Hillsborough.

OC Commissioners to Meet With Both School Boards in Hillsborough

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