The Klein ISD board of trustees approved raises and a new benefits plan for thousands of employees at a board meeting July 13.

The board approved a general pay raise for the 2015-16 school year of $2,160 for teachers, librarians, nurses and speech pathologists—the largest group of employees with more than 3,600 on staff. The increase is a 4 percent raise of the control point, or a point between the minimum and maximum salaries available to employees, district officials said.

First-year teachers also saw a salary increase from $50,000 last year.

“We’re excited about raising our minimum teacher salary to $51,000,” said Curt Drouillard, associate superintendent of human resource services. “This puts us right in line with our neighboring school districts.”

“We’re excited about raising our minimum teacher salary to $51,000. This puts us right in line with our neighboring school districts.”

- Curt Drouillard, associate superintendent of human resource services

KISD Superintendent Jim Cain said the district initially considered a 2 or 3 percent pay increase. However, an additional $8.4 million in revenue provided by the state during the last legislative session helped the district raise the pay increase to four percent.

The extra contributions from the state also allowed KISD to consider raising the district’s debt service portion of its property tax rate this year by 2 cents per $100 valuation rather than the 4 cents estimated following the passage of a $498 million bond referendum in May, Cain said.

“Prior to the $8.4 million in additional revenue [received from the state], we talked about raising the tax rate because of the bond by 4 cents in the first year,” he said. “Now it would just be 2 cents, and that would be a tremendous savings to our taxpayers.”

The state funding helped KISD soften the blow to employees as a result of health care premium increases as well, district officials said. The board of trustees approved a new health care plan at the July 13 meeting in which 59 percent of its employees will not see an increase in health care costs but rather a $5 savings per month.

Drouillard said premiums increased by about $2.5 million for the district in 2015-16, but KISD agreed to cover 70.8 percent of the increase, or about $1.8 million.