Meanwhile, nonexempt staff will be getting a 4% increase after officials opted the amend the compensation package at the meeting.
What you need to know
The 3% increase will bring the starting salary for teachers in the district to $62,500, which is up from last year's $60,600, according to district documents. The district will also maintain its pay bump every five years for teachers, which amount anywhere from a 6.9%-8% increase depending on the level.
The teacher salary bump will cost $9.6 million, documents show.
Originally, the compensation plan called for 3% raises for nonexempt staff, which are usually hourly workers. While officials didn't have exact numbers at the meeting, they said the additional 1% increase will cost around $400,000.
Officials also approved $400,000 in stipend adjustments, the bulk of which will go toward speech language pathologists, which officials said the district has struggled to maintain and recruit. The rest will go toward various academic, fine art and athletic stipends, according to district documents.
An additional $625,000 will go toward increasing benefits too, documents show.
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The total package more than doubles in total cost what the district approved last year, which brought in a 1% salary increase to the teacher pay scale, as well as other professional and administrative staff, and 2% for nonexempt staff.
That package cost the district a little more than $5 million and came as the district was faced with what became a $17.4 million shortfall and the possibility of a voter-approval tax rate election, or VATRE, being called for November.
Voters approved the VATRE and it allowed the district to break even in its FY 2023-24 projections.
Dating back to the 2017-18 school year, the district has generally offered between 2%-4% in salary increases, documents show.
What they said
Several trustees voiced support for the package. While some, such as board trustee Jeff Larson, said they wished it could be higher, they felt it was a strong package given the district's financial outlook. Trustee Scott Bowen, who originally moved to offer the additional 1% to nonexempt staff, also noted how when discussions originally began in the spring on possible compensation, the package originally being pitched was for a 2% increase.
"I would like to be able to keep our faculty salaries up in line with inflation, unfortunately that's just simply not possible with the money we have," Larson said. "I am impressed again with our ... budget and the small size of our deficit that we're even able to talk about a 3% increase."
