Early plans show teachers set for 2% pay raise

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

HALE

A plan to further equalize teacher pay across the state could mean an additional $500,000 a year in state money for Warren County teachers, but Director of Schools Dr. Jerry Hale said any funding changes are still a long way from becoming reality.

“At this point things are just in the planning stages. Nothing’s definite yet,” Hale said. “Until the General Assembly acts on the governor’s budget and enacts several law changes, we will just have to wait and see.”

Recent state estimates have all of the state’s 136 school districts sharing at least $150 million in additional funding next year. This money, if approved by the General Assembly, would provide teachers a 2-percent, across-the-board pay raise, help cover the costs of classroom supplies, and would help to bridge the funding gap between poorer, rural districts and richer, urban ones.

A state Supreme Court ruling last year found the state’s funding formula isn’t fair to smaller school districts which do not have the tax base to produce the revenue reaped by larger districts.

Last year, the state provided an initial boost to the state’s 75 most poorly funded districts by increasing by $27 million the amount of state funding they receive for teacher salaries.

Warren County just missed the cut off for receiving this money, a decision which disappointed many local teachers.

This year, instead of just raising salaries in the lowest-paying systems, the state is looking to overhaul the way all salaries are calculated. No longer will state funding be proportional to a system’s average teacher salary, a practice which opponents say unfairly benefits larger, better-paying districts. Instead, current projections have every district’s portion of state funding based on an average teacher salary of $34,000, a policy state officials are confident will meet the mandates of the court order.

However, districts will still be able to add additional local money to whatever they receive from the state, which Hale said would in essence would mean the state would have 136 salary schedules.

Changes to each system’s funding increase are not expected to be finalized before April.