Cy-Fair ISD will increase staff numbers and employee salaries for the 2015-16 school year in preparation for a new elementary school opening this fall and a new high school planned for 2016. The district’s board of trustees voted to adopt an $882.9 million budget at its June 25 meeting, which was an increase from the $833.5 million budget from the 2014-15 school year. During the 2015-16 school year, the starting teacher salary will be $51,500 — a $1,475 increase from last year. The budget also includes a $2,000 salary increase for all classroom teachers, Chief Financial Officer Stuart Snow said. All clerical and hourly employees will receive a 5 percent salary increase while all other employees will receive a raise of 4 percent of the midpoint. “We wanted to give more attention to clerical and hourly employees,” Snow said. “Those rates are not as competitive as they should be.” The pay increases are also intended to offset the impact of the new Teacher Retirement System ActiveCare health insurance, Snow said. As CFISD prepares to open two new campuses in the next year, the district will hire more classroom teachers to accommodate anticipated student growth, reduce class sizes and achieve a 22-to-1 student-teacher ratio for K-4 classrooms. In total, $15 million of the budget will go toward the teacher salary increase and $2.8 million will be spent on the opening of Woodard Elementary School, with $3.1 million to be used for staffing K-4 classrooms at 22-to-1. “We didn’t feel we could handle the entire amount of changes we needed to make last year,” Snow said. “Now we are prioritizing those decisions and addressing and curing all of those issues this year.” The board is making these changes in conjunction with recommendations from the Texas Association of School Boards follow-up review from last year, Snow said. Additionally, the district’s proposed tax rate is $1.44 per $100 of valuation for the 2015-16 year, which includes a debt service tax rate of 40 cents and a maintenance and operations tax rate of $1.04. The board will adopt the tax rate in October. “Based on preliminary property evaluations that we’ve received by the Harris County Appraisal District which shows another expected increase in values, I am anticipating that the tax rate for debt service could be even less than the 40 cents that is shown here,” Snow said.