Horry County Schools Superintendent Clifford Jones presented a proposal to boost certain pay supplements across the district — including arts directors and athletic coaches — at a school board work session on Wednesday, March 18.
The proposal raises the lowest athletic supplement to $2,000. In addition, 17 athletic supplements have been boosted. Many of the supplements that were boosted help the district provide greater standardization of compensation across athletic programs.
Arts positions like band director, chorus director, assistant band director and theatre director saw a boost in supplement in the district’s proposal.
The entire proposed supplement sheet can be found below:
The Horry County Schools supplement proposal to the HCS Board from a board retreat on March 18, 2026.
By Joe Wedra
joe.wedra@myhorrynews.com
Jones said he was focused on “transparency” as he and the board talked extremely openly during Wednesday’s session.
“If you go around in South Carolina and try to look up different supplemental packages, sometimes it can be kind of hard to find, if not impossible,” Jones told the board. “I want to make sure I’m leading a district that puts out the supplements as part of any budget review, for anybody who wants to look at it. I want it there to find just as easy as the salary tables. That’s where you start to create more transparency.”
A new athletics-based supplement was introduced: a new middle school athletic director supplement. This position will lessen the responsibility for current staff members who oversee middle school athletics — at most schools, the high school athletic director oversees the direction of middle school athletic events.
The supplement for the middle school athletic director position is proposed to be $5,000. For a comparison, the high school athletic director supplement is currently $16,000.
“I was a little shocked to hear who was running middle school athletics,” Jones said. “It was the high school AD, coming and going and doing middle school athletics for the attendance cluster they’re in. That’s not typical. I’m not sure how we ended up that way. In this budget proposal around supplements, you will see this new position.”
The middle school athletics supplement is not a new position; it will involve someone currently involved with the school who is willing to manage those middle school athletic events on-site.
In the proposal, elementary, middle and high school arts supplements will be standardized and increased to $2,500. Jones says this will “ensure greater consistency across schools while recognizing the significant time required outside the instructional day to prepare performances, rehearsals, competitions and community events.”
The proposal also introduces an assistant band supplement for marching band programs with more than 75 students. Jones said programs of this size require additional supervision, instructional support and logistical coordination.
“We know marching bands, they require more supervision, more technical know-how,” Jones said. “There’s a lot more on this programs in particular. We want to create resources so those experiences can grow and be excellent. This helps sort of push programs to do that.”
Jones and the board continued the robust, lengthy discussion, much of it focusing on providing current arts and athletic directors more support to navigate the number of students involved in each program.
