MARTINBURG – A group of Berkeley County school nurses say they are not being properly compensated for their work.
The 31 plaintiffs filed their complaint March 18 in Berkeley Circuit Court against the Berkeley County Board of Education.
"School nurses are clinically and medically responsible for every heartbeat on the school campus — teachers, students, and staff," attorney Teresa Toriseva told The West Virginia Record. "The entire school is their clinic and all the people who study and work there are their patients.
Toriseva
"This lawsuit is about protecting school nurses’ wages and benefits. These school nurses are fighting to protect their wages and benefits the same way they fight to protect our kids and teachers."
According to the complaint, the nurses are non-exempt salaried employees scheduled to work 7.5 hours per day, which includes seven hours of work and 30 minutes unpaid for lunch.
“The plaintiffs, however, frequently work eight hours or more per day,” the complaint states. “During the height of the pandemic, many of the school nurses worked more than 60 hours per week for the defendant in order to combat the impact of the pandemic on students’ education.
“The defendant does not pay the plaintiffs for working more than seven hours per day. In fact, many school nurses routinely arrive early to work and stay after school hours in order to complete all of their work and responsibilities. …
“Most of the plaintiffs do not receive their allotted half-hour duty-free lunch. Again, the defendant does not pay the plaintiffs for working through their lunch breaks. … Some school nurses have been requested to ‘volunteer’ to work after hours or during the summers to perform sports physicals for the defendant. Again, the plaintiffs receive no compensation for the hours they spend ‘volunteering’ for the defendants.”
The nurses also say they aren’t paid overtime when they work more than 40 hours per week despite it being required by state law and the school board’s own internal pay policies.
“The deficiencies in the plaintiffs’ pay exacerbate the recruitment and retention issues facing Berkeley County Schools,” the complaint states.
The nurses’ salaries are based on education and years of service. But, they say the board has not properly classified years of experience, and, therefore, has not been paying correct salaries. The nurses say this has been going on for decades.
The nurses say they aren’t provided appropriate salary stipends, such as a Therapeutic and Diagnostic Services stipend that help with education plans for students with exceptionalities such as Individualized Educational Plans. The nurses say all other school board medical professionals are given this stipend.
The nurses also say they aren’t paid a required Mentoring Stipend meant to compensate them for training new hire nurses. Again, they say all other school board professional employees are provided this stipend.
“The plaintiffs, like other employees of the defendant, spend their personal money on necessary nursing supplies in order to do their job and to meet the students’ needs,” the complaint states. “The defendant arbitrarily set a $200 annual limit for all nursing supplies and other items that a school nurse must use in order to provide services to students. This $200 limit is to cover the needs of up to 1,800 students.
“Only in 2023 did the defendant increase the annual arbitrary limit to $500 per school nurse. For some school nurses in larger schools, even the increased amount is insufficient.”
The nurses also say the school board fails to reimburse them for expenses incurred for maintaining their professional accreditations, including licenses and certifications. The complaint says
“West Virginia law requires that boards of education reimburse the cost of expenses associated with attaining such qualifications and provide bonus compensation to school nurses,” the complaint states. “The defendant’s own employee handbook states that school nurses will receive those benefits, as required by law. The defendant, however, does not provide those benefits to its school nurses.”
And finally, the nurses say the board does not provide adequate substitute nurses. That means some nurses can’t properly use their leave time, personal time or comp time.
“Each and every single one of the aforementioned pay and working condition issues has cumulated into a retention and recruitment problem for Berkeley County Schools,” the complaint states. “Berkeley County Schools is struggling to retain the qualified and skilled school nurses that it has and is struggling to attract new school nurses as well.
“These issues jeopardize the health and safety of the student body as school nurses play an active part in ensuring that students are healthy in schools.”
The plaintiffs accuse the board of violating the West Virginia Wage Payment and Collection Act by failure to pay overtime, failure to pay the required stipends, failure to accurately pay wages based on years of service, failure to provide duty-free lunch and administrative periods, failure to reimburse expenses related to professional licenses and other out-of-pocket expenses, failure to provide vacation and sick pay and failure to pay any wages for orientation of substitute school nurses as well violating the West Virginia Minimum Wage and Maximum Hours Standards for Employees for failure to pay overtime. They also accuse the board of breach of employment contract.
They seek injunctive relief, compensatory damages, statutory interest, liquidated damages, court costs, attorney fees and other relief.
The plaintiffs are Jennifer Baker, Melissa Bates, Lisa Michele Pumphrey Billings, Lynne Blackshear, Jamey Breeden, Tina Cameron, Colleen Coleman, Heidi Crawford, Penny Creel, Ericka Diffenderfer, Susan Dilly, Erin Dye, Hannah Eyler, Amanda Fultz, Matthew Gainey, Tiffany Hite, Elizabeth Hutzler, Jane Ishman, Lisa McFadden, Aljenny Molina, Dawn Myers, Stacy Petersheim, Kimberly Polinik, Dara Randolph, Melissa Renner, Nicole Schultz, Sandra Spitalsky, Angela Stanley, Deborah Stine, Katie Stringer and Carol Woodruff.
The nurses are being represented by Toriseva and Josh Miller of Toriseva Law in Wheeling. The firm has represented several other groups across the state in wage payment cases.
Berkeley Circuit Court case number 24-C-169
