Ybarra gives out more than $600,000 in staff bonuses, a one-year record

09/21/2022 - State Superintendent Sherri Ybarra gave her employees more than $600,000 in bonuses this spring.

It’s the largest set of bonuses Ybarra has awarded in her eight years in office. The payments began in April, weeks before the May Republican primary. Ybarra finished third in the three-person primary, and will leave office in January.

The bonuses — known as “temporary merit increases,” in state government parlance — represent a one-time bump in pay, at 9% for every employee in Ybarra’s State Department of Education. At the same time, every SDE employee is also eligible for a permanent, 7% pay increase, consistent with raises approved by the 2022 Legislature. Altogether, a handful of the department’s highest-paid staffers will receive more than $20,000 in raises and bonuses.

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