With the passage of the budget for the 2014-15 school year, the Spring ISD board of trustees emphasized public safety and employee pay raises, providing additional staff to the police department and raising the average teacher's salary by 6 percent.
The board of trustees unanimously approved the adoption of a $361.4 million budget at a Spring ISD board meeting June 10. The budget allowed for an increase in the starting salary of a teacher with no prior experience from $45,537 to $48,500.
"There were things in this budget that we couldn't do, but I'm particularly proud that there are a lot of things we were able to do with this budget that we couldn't do before," Vice President Mel Smith said. "We can pay our teachers more, and there were years when we couldn't give raises."
However, employees across the district received pay increases as a 5 percent increase was provided for non-teaching staff, including a 3 percent raise for the cost of living and a 2 percent raise to offset rising insurance costs.
