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State Board Approves Plan to Give Speech, Hearing Professionals $5,000 Bonus

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It appears teachers won’t be the only Oklahoma public school employees getting a pay bump next year.

The State Board of Education has signed off on a plan to offer nationally certified speech pathologists, audiologists and psychologists $5,000 bonuses.

"This is so critical in meeting the needs of our children who are struggling readers, who are the most vulnerable in the early years that need to have those support services through our speech pathologists, audiologists and school psychologists," said State Superintendent Joy Hofmesiter.

The bonuses will be paid for by taking $3.65 million from the State Department of Education's flexible benefit allowance.

"We believe that even after this reduction we’ll have sufficient funds to cover the projected cost of the flexible benefit allowance and, meanwhile, affecting approximately 730 personnel that are serving in schools that are desperately needed to help our students be successful," Thompson said.

Thompson said the number of those support professionals dropped sharply over the past two years while the bonus, which is set in state law, wasn’t funded.

"We’ve got to get that turned around, and the only way to ensure that continues moving forward is for cuts to the public school activity line item to be restored — at least begin to be restored — next fiscal year," Thompson said.

The bonus is contingent upon state finance officials approving the transfer from the flexible benefit allowance.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.