MUSD addresses retirement, vacation issues

The Maricopa Unified School District tackled two issues appropriate to the fast-approaching end of the school year at its governing board meeting Wednesday – retirement and vacations.

The district voted 5-0 to approve retaining Educational Services Inc. as its vendor for staffing placement services for both certified and classified personnel for the 2021-22 school year. This is important to many employees who may be eligible for state retirement but wish to keep working in their current position.

When district personnel want to “retire and rehire,” Arizona law requires them to work for an outside entity for one year before they can return to work for the district.

“It’s a very unique situation in Arizona,” said Tom Beckett, director of human resources for MUSD.

Employees can sign on with ESI, a Scottsdale company, which pays them a smaller salary than they were earning, with the difference being made up by their Arizona State Retirement payments, he said. After a year, employees can then leave ESI and return to employment with the district, staying as long as they wish.

During that year they are employees of ESI, which assumes all liability including compliance with the Affordable Care Act and Arizona’s Proposition 206 requirements on sick leave accrual.

District staffers are considered state employees, which means retirement eligibility is based on an age-plus-years of service formula. The specific numbers vary depending upon the employee’s hiring date.

The vacation issue applies only to a small number of administrators who work year-round. These administrators earn 24 vacation days annually but may not have more than 30 days accumulated at any given time. Once 30 days are accumulated, these employees no longer accrue additional vacation time. Moreover, they may only carry over a maximum of six days into a new contract year.

Those administrators may now get some relief with action taken Wednesday night by the governing board.

They can opt to have the district buy out up to 10 days of their vacation at their daily rate, alleviating the need to take unwanted vacation days or lose days if they can’t be taken.

“I think that’s an important distinction, it’s an option,” said board member Torri Anderson. “We’re not making anyone buy out their vacation. It’s an option.”