Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 6, 1990 TAG: 9004060421
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT LENGTH: Long
Under pressure from Brooks and some bus drivers, the Franklin County School Board agreed Tuesday to consider paying each of the 11 bus drivers an extra $2,102 next year.
The School Board's willingness to consider the pay issue was announced minutes before the Board of Supervisors was to make a key school budget decision in which Brooks was considered the swing vote.
Brooks later said the pay issue - from which his wife, Ann, would benefit - did not affect his vote to advance the proposed school budget to a public hearing.
"I would have voted for it anyway," he said.
Brooks said he saw nothing wrong with his intervention in the pay issue even though his wife was one of the bus drivers involved.
"It ain't that I'm trying to push it just for her," Brooks said in a telephone interview from a golf vacation in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Brooks said his concern was for all school bus drivers, who he said are underpaid until they reach the top level of the county's pay scale.
Under the current scale, bus drivers must work for more than 11 years before they are paid wages competitive with neighboring localities, Brooks said.
"When you have that kind of disparity in the system, something has to be done," he said.
Brooks, who represents the Union Hall district, said he lobbied school officials and School Board members on behalf of 40 of the county's 109 school bus drivers who had not attained full seniority.
"I was lobbying to bring it [salaries] up for all the lower drivers," Brooks said.
But two school officials say Brooks pressed them on a more specific problem: how 11 school bus drivers were being made to wait another year before receiving a $2,102 seniority raise they had been expecting next fall. Among those 11 are his wife, a driver with 10 years of experience.
Assistant Superintendent Wesley Naff said Brooks contacted him last month after Naff had been assigned to resolve bus drivers' complaints.
"He just felt it was an injustice to those 11 drivers who were expecting a big increase this year," Naff said.
School Board Chairman Jack Newbill said that Brooks approached him after a March 27 budget workshop to discuss the plight of the 11 bus drivers.
"He was concerned that they were going to give up more than anyone else," Newbill said.
Brooks denied asking for changes that would affect only the 11 drivers. "I didn't recommend that," he said.
Brooks was not the only person pressuring school officials to amend a School Board-approved compensation package in which bus drivers and other school employees would receive retirement benefits in lieu of a 5 percent pay raise next year.
Some bus drivers - particularly the 11 whose $2,102 seniority raise would be postponed - objected to the plan.
"All the bus drivers look forward to the jump to what they call the `promised land,' " Naff said. "They saw the promised land was being postponed for a year."
The seniority raise would have raised the 11 drivers' daily wages from $27.57 to $38.08, an increase of nearly 40 percent. It would have worked out to $2,102 over the course of the 200-day school year.
To placate the bus drivers, Wesley met recently with leaders of the drivers association. What emerged from those discussions was a plan to restore the 11 bus drivers' seniority raises by reducing the number of steps on the pay scale from six to five. Some 30 other junior bus drivers, however, would get no pay raise other than in retirement benefits.
School Superintendent Len Gereau unveiled the plan Tuesday night when the Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote on the School Board's $27.8 million spending request for 1990-91.
Brooks, a past critic of school spending, was considered to be a swing vote on whether the supervisors would cut the proposed budget or advance it, intact, to a public hearing.
In his presentation, Gereau told the supervisors that if the school budget was not cut, he would recommend that the School Board revise the bus drivers' pay scale - restoring the raises to the 11 drivers.
Gereau said Thursday that his pitch was "absolutely not" crafted to appeal to Brooks.
Brooks did not participate in a brief discussion on the bus drivers plan.
Asked later why he didn't speak out for junior drivers who got nothing under the plan, Brooks replied: "Because I felt like I had a conflict of interest, in a way."
He said his earlier discussions with school officials had not constituted a conflict because he did not discuss specific plans.
With little comment, the Board of Supervisors voted 4-3 to send the budget to a public hearing without making any cuts.
Brooks said his vote in favor of the public hearing was not affected by the School Board's willingness to restore raises to the 11 bus drivers.
In an interview, Brooks said he felt so strongly that school bus drivers are paid unfairly that he had been willing to stick his neck out - even if it meant people would question his motives.
"Regardless of how this comes out, I'm going to be accused of having a special interest to my wife," he said. "But all I've done is to ask them to balance it [the pay scale] out for equal pay for equal work."
Several bus drivers interviewed said Brooks had tried to do more for them in a few weeks than school officials had in the last three years.
"We're getting a raw deal," said one driver who would not give her name for fear of retribution by the school system.
"Mike Brooks is just trying to help everybody," said Gladys Dunman, who has been driving a school bus for seven years. "He's trying to help all the `under' people."
***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on April 7, 1990\ Correction\ Because of a copy editor's error, a headline in Friday's paper stated incorrectly that Franklin County Supervisor Mike Brooks cast a vote that financially benefited his wife. Although Brooks lobbied for a special salary increase for his wife and 10 other school bus drivers, the Board of Supervisors has yet to vote on the matter.
Memo: Correction