The board approved a pay raise for all its staff and teachers during a June 23 board meeting. The item passed 5-2 with board members Michael Wagoner and Jennifer Driver in opposition.
The details
The board approved a variety of pay increases including state and local funded raises.
The state mandated pay increases come from House Bill 2 which passed the Texas Legislature earlier this year. The pay increase is only for teachers with three or more years of experience. Those mandated pay increases include:
- $2,500 increase for teachers with 3-4 years experience
- $5,000 increase for teachers with 5+ years experience
The bill did not allocate funds to increase the salaries for teachers with less than two years of experience or district staff such as nurses, counselors, librarians and other paraprofessionals.
The board approved other pay increases including:
- $2,300 increase for teachers with 0-2 years experience
- 4% increase for all staff
“At a time when we’re trying to encourage people to choose to come into teaching ... why would you not put some kind of incentive to come to education,” Superintendent Tom Maglisceau said.
Zooming out
The board approved an additional 2% raise for some staff members totaling a 6% increase. These departments include:
- Transportation
- Food services
- Clerical
- Maintenance/ custodial
- Aides
The additional 2% to these positions is to offset the increase in Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) health insurance premiums employees may see if they use the insurance, said Melissa Kelly, the district’s chief of business resources. The insurance increases amount to about $1,800 more a year.
If these positions, which have a lower starting salary than teachers, did not get an additional raise they see less take-home pay, Kelly said.
For example, if an employee makes $35,000 a year they would take home $33 less per month with only a 4% pay increase. Each additional percent increase would reduce that amount by $29. With a 6% increase their take home pay is now $25 more a month, Kelly said.
“Those are actual take-home dollars that can be very significant for some of our categories of employees,” she said.
What they are saying
Wagoner and Driver, who voted against the pay raises, both said they wanted to do the pay raise but would have picked a different scale.
Wagoner said he didn’t like the perception of the board approving higher percentage pay raises for staff and not teachers.
Also of note
In considering the additional raise for staff, the board had to weigh adding more money to its fund balance. The goal for the board was to account for about 75 days worth of operating to go into its fund balance, which acts similarly to a savings account.
To make the raise happen, the board had to consider saving less money. The board decided to save money for about 73 days over operation instead of its goal of 75 to account for staff raises.
With the selected pay raises, the board put $2.02 million in its fund balance opposed to $2.37 million if only a 3% raise was given to staff.
“Seems to me the 4% pay raise is so much more important than those two days,” board president Jeff Gravley said.
