At last Tuesday’s Clinton City Board of Education meeting, school officials revealed a framework of what the state General Assembly is likely to incorporate into its budget as it pertains to North Carolina schools, funding that will directly impact the local system.
According to information released by the North Carolina School Boards Association, teacher salaries could increase an average of eight percent for beginning teachers, with monthly take-home pay of $4,800 over 10 months, which would equal the $48,000.
Each year of experience would see an increase, as follows:
• One year experience is $48,250, $4,825 monthly,
• Two years $48,500, $4,850 monthly
• Three years – $48,750, $4,875 monthly
• Four years $49,000, $4,900 monthly
• Five years $49,500, $4,950 monthly
• Six years- $50,000, $5,000 monthly
• Seven years- $50,500, $5,050 monthly
• Eight years- $51,000, $5,100 monthly
• Nine years- $51,500, $5,150 monthly
• 10 years-$53,140, $5,314 monthly
• 11 years- $53,650, 5,365 monthly
• 12 years- $54,160, $5,416 monthly
• 13 years- $54,670, $5,467 monthly
• 14 years – $55,700, $5,570 monthly
• 15 though 24 years- $56,820, $5,682 monthly
• 25 years and over- $59,000, $5,900 monthly
Some of the other proposed updates for a potential budget also would see bonuses to teachers — $1,000 for teachers that have over 16 years of experience and $500 for those with 15 or fewer years. School employees not on a teacher salary would see a three percent increase, with any earning above $65,000 getting $1,000 and those earning less than this amount receiving $1,750.
State employees would also get the same increase percentage as well with the same guideline. Retirees would be subject to a 2.5 percent bonus.
When Clinton City Schools Superintendent Dr.Wesley Johnson presented the information to the board, member Clark Hales raised a question regarding the flat period of pay for teachers with 15 years of experience up to 24 years.
“I know this is very premature to talk about this; Dr. B (board chairwoman Dr. Linda Brunson) and I have had a conversation about this on the phone very indirectly,” Hales began. “Being that (the pay) is not retroactive and there’s not a lot of things we can do from a fiscal standpoint because that’s all state budget stuff, but especially for the longevity of our teachers that (have reached) 15 or 20 plus years, maybe (we) could look at a way to put a little something (funding), whether that be their supplement or whatever the case. Looking at some of our peers in other districts, once you get to that 15 to 20 year bar, our supplements are a little stagnant. Not that we can pay what some of our neighbors can pay, I’m not expecting that, but just to reward those longer tenured folks. Raises from the state’s perspective for the longer tenure employees are not nearly what they are for the less tenured employees.”
Johnson acknowledged Hales’ points.
“Mr. Hales is dead-on on a couple of things,” the superintendent told the board. “Traditionally, they (state) give these big bumps to the early career adopters. But you also have to remember that those early career adopters aren’t receiving health benefits when they retire either. That’s a big deal. But this budget, if passed, the minimum that anybody would get is five and a half percent. So the minimum that any teacher would receive is 5.5 percent. There’s an extra thousand dollars for this or that, we can look at all that. This budget is better than what they have put forward in the last two to three cycles.”
Johnson also took a moment to point out some of the numbers in regards to what the state has been putting together for a proposed budget. Hales then gave a follow-up.
“(The pay staying flat at 15 years and onward) that’s what I’m kind of getting at here. At 15 it gets rather what I would consider very stagnant” Hales emphasized. “When we look at what we can do, we, as a local school board, can’t do anything about that (the starting pay amount), but what we can control is our local supplement. Just within reason, try to make up for a little bit of that in some manner. I know there’s one district that borders our county that we can’t dollar for dollar pay what they pay, but we could make it to where it wouldn’t be as easy a decision to go work there, once you factor in gas and everything else, if we can get ours (supplements) a little bit higher.”
No decisions were made.
The next Clinton City Board of Education meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 30.