I'm in a sort of predicament at my place of employment, but first the background. Currently, I'm working as a computer specialist making about $29k a year at a local school district in the tri-state area. My jobs include managing the phone system, a few servers, two schools with about 70 teachers, and programming small applications.
Recently, I took the initiative to create an application drawn from the districts desire for a specific piece of software. My initial work on this application took place during my spare time at work and at home. About a year later, I presented my unfinished project to the key people at the district. Needless to say, they were very enthusiastic about the application I was creating and wanted me to continue my work full-time.
Things went fairly quickly after my initial presentation. The wheels got moving to fill my technology specialist position temporarily in order for me to work full-time. I met with the Director of the Business Office and my boss regarding how things would work moving forward. The Director basically asked me to give him a number of what I wanted to be paid. I talked to a few of my buddies and figured out what I feel I should be paid initially. I felt that based on what the application entailed that $80k would be a reasonable amount per-year (plus benefits).
Once I gave the Director my number, he expressed to me that once the application was fully-functional, then he would be able to present my new position proposal to the board. It felt kind of odd, but I was okay with it since I was excited to program every day. I assumed he took this route because of how I expressed my vision for the application. The vision I expressed entailed a "never-done" approach, by adding features incrementally, the work would continue way after the applications initial release. Since then, I've been pulled in and out of my old position as a technology specialist because of the temporary hires. Thus giving me a huge whiplash of playing catch up with the technology department and figuring out where I was at in my programming.
Here is my main question for the community:
Am I being too passive about this whole deal? I feel like I should be paid at my requested rate (if not somewhere close to there) if I'm creating the application. I'm mainly being passive right now because I know it's a public school district and not a business.
Some quick background:
- I only have a 1-year of college under my belt and a high school diploma
- I've created a few other applications for the district
- The superintendent and a few other educational administrators are very interested in what I'm creating
- The solution I'm creating is very unique to the district; there isn't any off-the-shelf equivalent at the moment
Any helpful advice would be appreciated!
Thanks,