As announced in President Martin’s May 3 email, the Board approved a 2.5% compensation pool effective July 1, 2022. For staff, the compensation pool will be awarded on the basis of merit, excluding those in the bargaining unit and those employed with Drake Head Start (we will work separately with the bargaining unit and Head Start leaders on matters relating to the compensation of those staff members).

We are thrilled that the Board was able to authorize this pool and we hope you are happy as well.

Human Resources and Finance are working together to verify the pool allocations by department and will soon send to department leaders and budget managers more information about next steps in the process. Note that this is a pool and it is designed to be allotted for merit. This means managers will have some discretionary authority to determine the actual merit increases. That is, we are not making an automatic across-the-board merit increases of 2.5% for all staff.

Human Resources will provide guidance and support to managers in the coming weeks to help guide these decisions. This process will take time, so please hold your questions (for HR and your manager) about your specific merit increase—none of those decisions have been made yet. We pledge to share information as soon as decisions are made. We do need to exercise proper diligence to assure we put these funds to appropriate use.

Again, we are delighted to have this additional work appear on our plates and are grateful that the Board was able to approve the funds to make these much-deserved increases.

— Maureen De Armond, Human Resources