(Radio Iowa) – The Davenport Community School District is thanking its two-thousand employees for their hard work during the pandemic. The Board of Education approved incentive pay totaling two-thousand dollars each for all but the top administrators. Jami Weinzierl, the district’s director of human resources and equity, explains the many motivations for the financial reward.

“Due to the lack of substitute teachers, the turnover, the inflation and competing with other organizations for talent because of the increase in wages,” Weinzierl says. “A lot of our staff has had to pick up extra duties and have been extremely flexible in working hard for us.”

The first installment of one-thousand dollars will be paid on March 25th for hourly employees, and April 1st for salaried workers. The second installment of 500-dollars will be paid in the fall, with another 500 next spring. It will cost the district about five-million dollars, with the money coming from the federal pandemic relief program ESSER, Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief Fund.