Pay raises: Amidst the chaos, we see a mixed bag of healthy and pitiful salary increases for school employees
Related: We repeat: You will have to fight locally for pay raises. Here’s why.
Texas AFT has been getting a lot of emails and messages lately from educators asking about raises in their districts after the influx of new money from the school finance bill, House Bill 3. Unfortunately, with more than 1,100 districts in Texas we can’t possibly keep track of what’s happening in all of them. As the Dallas Morning News reports in its front-page story yesterday titled, “Texas is spending billions more on education, but teachers may not get the raises they expect”:
The Texas Legislature ponied up $11.6 billion for public education in this year’s session. That should mean school districts — and teachers — are now flush with cash, right?
Not quite. Misconceptions about Texas’ massive school finance overhaul are running fast even as districts are in the throes of finalizing their budgets for the upcoming academic year.
Yes, there is more money for schools. In some instances, it’s significant. In others, it’s not. And in many cases, teachers who thought they’d be big winners with big raises may find their paychecks haven’t really increased all that much.
The fact is that some districts have done a good job keeping their communities and employees informed — which hopefully then gets reported in the media — and some haven’t. To be fair, HB 3 is a complex bill and figuring out just how much new money districts will get and how that translates into raises has been challenging. Districts are receiving guidance from the Texas Education Agency and professional organizations, but much of the delay has been waiting on new “templates” for districts to use in figuring out state funding, as well as new methods for identifying low-income students and questions surrounding estimating property value increases. Many districts have waited until July to put out pay proposals. (Check my previous column if you need a primer on how the raises are supposed to be calculated.)
This I do know: districts with local Texas AFT unions present have been much more responsive in getting out information and providing significant raises. Here’s a sample:
Austin ISD (7%)
El Paso ISD (up to 6.5%) and Socorro ISD (5%)
Sheldon ISD (10–15%)
Aldine ISD (7–8%)
Alief ISD (6–8.49%)
Spring Branch (6–9%)
Houston ISD (3.5–8%)
Fort Bend ISD ($3000 to $3,500 raise)
Also heartening to see are significant pay raises for support staff, with some districts even upping their minimum wage to $15/hour. A significant push from our Houston Education Support Professionals union managed to get its school board to reverse track and up its minimum hourly rate to $14. As Houston Federation of Teachers members told Houston’s Channel 11:
“Support personnel, we might [now] be able to take our kids to the movie,” said Wretha Thomas, President of Houston Educational Support Personnel, the union for HISD support staff.
….Andy Dewey, executive vice president of the Houston Federation of Teachers….also praised the cancellation of a planned five-percent increase on health insurance.
“(It’s) huge,” he said. “We have some members on a family plan who are paying over $10,000 a year for insurance. Some of our classified workers are simply working for insurance.”
Meanwhile, San Antonio and North East ISDs got more modest raises in the 3% range, after superintendents and their School Boards expressed concern about future funding levels, as the San Antonio Express News reported:
The San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel, the union representing San Antonio ISD’s non-administrative employees, asked Monday for 6 percent raises for the least experienced teachers, nurses, librarians and counselors and 6.5 percent for more experienced ones. It sought an 8 percent increase for the least experienced paraprofessionals and other classified employees and 8.5 percent for those with more experience.
The SAISD board instead approved raises of 3 percent for teachers with five or fewer years’ experience and 3.5 percent for those more experienced. Trustees approved similar raises for support staff and instructional coaches. All other full-time permanent employees got a 3 percent raise, and SAISD raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour, resulting in a 13 percent raise for its lowest-paid employees.
Many districts, like Cy-Fair ISD, also have gone with lower percentage raises but bolstered them with one-time bonuses — a tactic intended to address uncertainties in future funding, but one that doesn’t guarantee additional ongoing compensation. And some unions (particularly in the Rio Grande Valley) are still in waiting mode, but they aren’t being quiet about it. Corpus Christi AFT objected to its district putting salary announcements on hold until July 22. Northside AFT also showed up in force at its School Board meeting last week after the district failed to put a compensation plan on the agenda.
While I highlighted some good results first, there also is plenty of disappointing news as well, such as the clunker pay raises of 1–2% percent in many districts. Also concerning are districts that already planned on giving a raise with existing money, and then they counted that compensation toward what is required by law. For example, one district had enough money in its existing budget to provide a 2% raise. HB 3 required a 4% raise total. The district didn’t add the 4% to 2% it had planned to get to 6%; it just proposed a 4% raise.
Although our Dallas ISD (Alliance-AFT) union pushed for more consistency for across-the-board raises, the School Board doubled down on supporting its “pay for performance” system — the Teacher Excellence Initiative, which bases compensation considerably on student STAAR scores — by providing additional compensation for teachers rated at different levels in the system. The district said its goal was to follow a study it commissioned to bring different positions and levels of experience to “market levels” to compete with other districts. As the Dallas Morning News reports:
Flush with an influx of new state money, the Dallas school board has approved a budget that includes a salary bump for teachers and a cut in its property tax rate. Still….many teachers are not happy that their raises will not be as big as they hoped….teachers and staff aren’t happy with how DISD is distributing the portion of new money mandated for their raises, saying they wanted significant across-the-board hikes.
Dozens of district employees showed up at Thursday’s board meeting, many pointing to other districts across the state that gave raises of up to 10% to teachers, or lump-sum bumps based on years of experience.
But the budget DISD trustees approved that night uses a big chunk of the district’s new money to revamp its pay-for-performance system Teacher Excellence Initiative.
DISD adjusted the system so that more teachers would qualify for the highest levels on the salary scale.
The overall average pay increase for teachers would be about $2,800 compared to the average bump of about $1,700 that they saw in the 2018–19 school year. But teachers say there’s still too much uncertainty in the system, with educators not knowing what to expect until the fall when their personal TEI information is given to them.
So how teachers will fare in Dallas is still uncertain, although counselors and nurses got a big bump (some nurses will get a $12,000 raise) to get them to the “market rate” of pay.
So, what’s a school employee to do if mum’s the word from your district on pay raises? By all means search the web for news, scour the district website, or just pick up the phone and call the human resource office to find out the status.
And if you really want to get fine-point details on what your district may be going through with its decision making, check out the TEA website set up to address questions surrounding HB 3, including a 30 minute video offering guidance on increasing employee compensation.
by Rob D’Amico, Texas AFT Communications Director
(Follow on Twitter @damicoaustin and @TexasAFT)
