HS really varies here. A couple have checks waiting for us at the field. One small school puts a handwritten check in the mail day after the game. A couple require direct deposit. There are a couple Arbiter pay schools. The vast majority pay along with the payroll checks or other disbursements they send out every two weeks. Occasionally there are issues- I moved seven years ago, but I was still in a school's system from the last time I did a game for them a long time ago and they didn't check Arbiter to see if there was an update. One local prep school is notoriously disorganized. But for the most part, you just kind of figure a check is coming in the mail at some point. Keep in mind- if you're doing games for public schools, they are governmental entities with strict rules about paying bills and writing checks. Every dollar has to be accounted for- it's not as easy as the coaches and parents at a local club just tossing cash around.
Around here, more and more schools are using ArbiterPay, so those are usually instant-ish. Some schools pay with a check at the field and some mail them, on various timetables. A very few pay cash at the field. It is only prudent to track all games' payments. I think I got my last check (for the season ended mid-October) in the first week of November, but that was an outlier. If/as needed, our chapter assignor helps resolve those in significant arrears, since it's with him that the schools have a written contract. It would be a shame if something happened to next week's refs.
Yeah, for that sport we got paid twice in the season. Once on 9/15 for all games from August 20s through 9/15, then 11/16 for 9/16 to there (which was most of the season). I don't know if it was in the contract to only get paid twice or what, but at least we didn't have to hound the schools for the money. Also everything is done through Arbiter so it isn't like we're dealing with some weird system. I dunno, maybe things will change next season. At least they are local schools and we don't have to pay our own airfare and hotel to do the games like some places we know
This is the exact answer I received from assignors and board members on why I have to wait as long as 2 months to get a check. I'm aware that these are not club teams. I'm all for every dollar being accounted for. However, what school employee would accept an answer of "Well, our finance team has been shorthanded the past two weeks...we'll try to get your money out next week" as an excuse for not getting paid? Granted, we're not school employees, but we show up on time, perform a service for them (officiate a game) and now we're at their mercy when (or if) we will get paid? All of the examples I gave were about ineptness, sloppiness and an antiquated system. One of the referees here mentioned he receives a check every 2 weeks, so it's possible to be paid in a timely manner and for the schools to have proper record keeping.
I absolutely want to be paid for my services, but I'm definitely much more lenient with getting paid by public high schools than I am for club teams (where we get paid every week) or the nation's professional league youth academy. However, if a game is cancelled very late or on site, no mercy, I want the full pay even from public high schools.
This is a topic that even the assignor and Board members admit has referees livid. In the current contract, there is no provision to be paid (full or half fee) if the game is canceled within 24 hours and NOT due to inclement weather. I have already been informed that this will NOT be a topic of discussion for the next contract that would be in effect next year.
What are they going to be willing to trade away at negotiations if they aren't bringing this stuff to the table?
The difference, though, is that the employees are in the payroll system and have the check automatically printed/deposited every two weeks. I may work a game for School System X on September 5, 2023 and not have been there since 2020. That stuff all has to be entered by hand. I agree, in an ideal world, that it would be like clockwork at every school. You work the game, the Athletic Director submits the voucher to accounting/payroll the next day, you get paid the next disbursement date. Easy peasy. Having once waited eight months to be paid for coaching a softball season at a school I literally worked at for my day job, I know it isn't going to happen everywhere. Sometimes it's because the "payroll department" is one old lady with a 1990's era Dell and she's doing the best she can. Sometimes it's because the athletic director secretly lives in Florida and never does his job (yes, this happened to a local school). All this stuff is obviously beyond our control, and yes we should be paid for the work we do. And yes, in an ideal world the school board would spend some money to get that payroll department a few more bodies and better technology. But we all read the news and know why that doesn't happen. It's part of the calculus in why we do certain games and not others. I don't strictly NEED the money from refereeing, so I am willing to be patient. I absolutely keep track, and when my season ends I track down missing checks. All of the assigners I work with are good about being the ones to actually shake the tree about missing payments. But for me, I'm more willing to do high school and college (believe it or not, the most trouble I had getting paid this year was a local small college) games because I value seeing the higher level of soccer than local USSF, the schedule works better for me, and there's less parent BS. I certainly understand "it's a pain in the ass to get paid" would swing that calculus for others. I'm not evangelizing for NFHS, but we all make choices based upon the facts on the ground. To answer the unrelated question- if we get in our cars to head to the site before the game is cancelled, we get a 50% paycheck. That was collectively bargained for by a consortium of different sports officials with our state HS association a while back. The winter sports guys were getting hammered with cancellations, and they drove the bus on it.
I had two games last fall that were cancelled after I arrived at the field. They forgot to cancel the referees. But the schools enter the game information in the system themselves, so they have to also cancel any request for officials for a game that is cancelled. I got paid the full game fee for both games. I also got the full game fee a few years ago when a game was cancelled just after halftime. (Air quality.) The state high school association sets the policies around game fees and things like cancellations, mileage, etc. I think that there being a state level policy on this kind of stuff limits the interest of schools in trying to nickel and dime the officials. I forgot to mention earlier that we are also paid for track and field through our state high school organization, which bills the schools for the officials assigned through USA Track & Field Oregon, even though that is not a NFHS or OSAA affiliated organization. Same deal. Work the meet, get a check about a month later from the association.
I don't think anyone here really needs the money. As a long-time USSF referee, I had nothing to compare high school officiating to and now do, thanks to everyone's responses in the past day. It's certainly not a NFHS issue, but it's our chapter/state who appear to be on both sides of the fence on these one sided "negotiations", who are the problem. Although referees are not employees, they add you onto their payroll (as it was explained to me), in the event any 1099 needs to be issued. However, when the next payroll comes about, you are somehow conveniently "missed" unless they are on the system where they are sending money directly to your checking account via direct deposit. As I mentioned earlier, I had 9 schools owing around Thanksgiving. In 8 of those cases, I never would have received payment if I didn't reach out. Patience is one thing. However, I don't have the time to be a collection agency and even if I did, I don't want to continue doing this (and shouldn't be) and would rather not return to officiate than be put in a position again to beg for money that is owed to me.
Around here all school pay by check. You fill out a voucher at the field and hand it to a school official (coach, athletic director site supervisor, etc). Eventually you get a check in the mail. Since most school pay on a two week cycle, that generally determines when you get paid. However, numerous factors can change that. If the voucher gets processed the same weeks that checks are issued, you might have to wait an additional two weeks to get paid. Some school official don't turn in the voucher right away and some even wait until the end of the season to turn them in. This is not a problem unique to high school soccer, it happens in all high school sports. I keep track of which schools have paid me and which schools have not. At the end of the season, I contact the schools that have not paid me. If I don't get checks in a reasonable amount of time after that I contact my HS assigner and he starts bugging the schools. I teach in a public school. I also get paid to work the scoreboard at volleyball and basketball games. For my teaching job, I obviously get paid a regular check every two weeks. For the scoreboard, it's a little more irregular since I have to fill out a voucher and it depends on when it gets processed. Yes, we should get paid on a regular basis, we need to give public school a bit of a leeway because of what they have to go through to pay everyone.
Kit, I'm a little surprised that you are getting paid for 'extra duty' apart from the regular payroll system, since you are already on staff. At least around here, all extra duty pay is covered by the district's contract with the union.
I respectfully disagree. There's not much they have to go through, whether they're issuing checks or sending payment via direct deposit. They're not volunteers. The schools I dealt with for non-payment have Athletic Directors whose average salaries are $115,000 and their secretaries who make over $70,000. The bare minimum I would expect is that they answer us in a timely manner if a check didn't go out and get back to us to resolve whatever caused it not to go out, without having to continuously follow-up.
To give a perspective from here. We do not have issues with payment in our chapter. In recent years, 90% of the schools went to ArbiterPay. At least half of the schools will pay you within 24 hours of the competition. There is an AD in one school that prides himself in paying before we leave. He will be sitting in his cart at HT and he will come up and say "oh by the way I already paid you guys". Other schools pay within 48-72 hours and that's fine as well. It's still quicker than tournaments, but honestly if it's within 2 weeks I am fine with that. There are a couple of schools that are notorious for paying late, but that's just like with our college games. And those are the ones that pay by check. So it really is about how the AD runs it. But the reality is, there is nothing more that the AD has to do than hit a button to pay us. It's just about how his or her office is set up and how efficient that person is. And if there is an issue with the school boards etc, then that should be taken up by the AD with them, because the expectation is that people get paid timely. I am also a teacher and our extra duty is also covered by our contract. Usually the extra duty gets processed at the end of a season - so I worked lacrosse games one year and it was all tacked on to a paycheck at the end of the season as "extra duty - sports". Did not have to fill anything out.
So on the positive side of things, this year in Iowa we are doing a full Referee Development Day at the end of February. This will be the day after our annual coaches symposium that we always hold on the last Saturday in February. We are going to do two unique trainings - one will be for new referees to be certified and the other will be designed for referees with 1-2 years of experience. I'm also working to do our mentor training sessions at the same time. Our recertifying mentors can use the field sessions for their practical mentor assignments, and we can also certify new mentors as well. In addition to these items, we're exploring events where mentors can get together to observe Girls Academy and ECNL matches at our full field indoor facility in two weeks and mid-February.
Couple of things going on in regards to payments. Most of it due to overactive auditors in the past few years. There were a good number of schools that paid extremely quickly out of separate budgets dedicated to athletic expenses. I know of no cases where the accounts were abused by the staff, but the auditors ruled in a number of districts that there was a possibility for abuse. Then, that spread from district to district, and the payment process lengthened. I assign the largest conference in my state. I assign games with a total value of close to $400,000, and you multiply my sport with all the other sports playing in the fall, and this is well over a million dollars. So, it’s a lot of money. The athletic departments at High Schools are overworked and understaffed. An athletic director might have 4 events at home and 4 away the same day with busing, students, coaches, field conditions, and parents all lining up for their right to complain. They are in at 7 and most times work 12 hour days. I have 48 schools in my conference, plus another 40 middle schools. I can say that not one of the almost 90 schools is unresponsive to our complaints about payment. Yes, some of them are late, but I kind of factor that in. Also, since we have at our fingertips a quicker pay system (zebrapay) in this case, there are referees who will not go direct deposit and instead block those schools.
Of the games I did, I am estimating that only 35% of the schools for whom I officiated home matches for utilize ZebraWeb direct deposit. Obviously with them, I had no issues getting payments. Unfortunately (from what I've been told), there is currently no way to force all schools to make payments in this manner, which would make it easier for all involved. The poorest school district in the state sent me money on time via ZebraWeb direct deposit while two of the best known and "reputable" catholic schools are still sending checks via pony express and took 2 months. I work and have worked in industries that fit your description as far as understaffed, etc, where the duties are far more complicated than busing issues and interviewing people for coaching vacancies and still get the job done within the needed deadlines. This is why I don't have sympathy for folks who are getting well over 6 figures to do a simple job that most here would love to do. My understanding is that our state has only a handful of these "mentors" that they never even advertised for and were hand-selected. In the past month, the only webinar I am aware that our state is doing is on how to write referee reports, but it is done entirely in Spanish. I understand why, but I've seen referee reports written poorly from folks from all walks of life. When I was a Grade 7, we had similar development days with current and retired pro referees and all of that is gone. There is nothing to prevent the state for doing something similar for everyone at what was formerly called the "Grassroots" level since we're still paying for full fee and getting nothing in return. Everything is now done online and the expenditures of doing yearly recerts at pricey hotel banquet halls have been gone for at least 6 years, so there are no excuses.
I screwed up the quote function: think you have an incomplete understanding of these athletic departments. Since I have finished my third year as a big time assignor (2800 games in 10 weeks) my appreciation of what these departments accomplish with an AD and an administrator is quite remarkable. I have far more sympathy than I used to. Your talking hundreds of athletes, parents, coaches, and officials. Waiting a while to get paid, I’m actually okay with.
Holy crap, I just realized that with the potential upcoming MLS PRO strike, they will need lower level guys to replace them. To all the people I made comments about saying the MLS Next fest to be seen by national assignors being an unfair burden on people… not so fast my friend. Maybe some refs made a big enough impression on the national assignors there to be selected as scabs lol
I am a 24 year employee of the district and that's how it's always been done with extra duties. We have to fill out a voucher. I am also the National Honor Society advisor and at the end of the year, I fill out a voucher for that duty as well.
A blast email was sent out today regarding MLS Next fees going up. I don't recall 4th official fees mentioned previously: ===================================== Fees for 2024 These fees are effective January 1, 2024. All payments for 2024 will reflect these updated fees (see attached). | Age Group | Ref Fee | AR1 Fee | AR2 Fee | 4th Fee | U13 | $ 80.00 | $ 50.00 | $ 50.00 | $ 25.00 | U14 | $ 90.00 | $ 55.00 | $ 55.00 | $ 25.00 | U15 | $ 100.00 | $ 65.00 | $ 65.00 | $ 25.00 | U16 | $ 110.00 | $ 70.00 | $ 70.00 | $ 30.00 | U17 | $ 110.00 | $ 70.00 | $ 70.00 | $ 30.00 | U18 | $ 110.00 | $ 70.00 | $ 70.00 | $ 30.00 | U19 | $ 110.00 | $ 70.00 | $ 70.00 | $ 30.00
Couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I wonder if they felt a squeeze if their games were finally going uncovered and decided to act
Love getting a raise for games I already did ... we'll take it. Hopefully this keeps pressure on ECNL and our state leagues to keep bumping the pay.