Salary Increases A Priority In School Budget

The budget for the Putnam County School System will once again include increases for salaries and wages.

Superintendent of Schools Jerry Boyd addressed the issue during a joint work session between county commissioners and school board members earlier this week.

“We’ve tried to raise salaries as much as we feasibly can, but one of the board members always asks, ‘when is enough going to be enough?'” Boyd said. “Well, with each year passing, I guess my best answer is it might not ever be enough. We are always going to try to be very responsible for what we ask for, but we are also going to be very in tune with where we are at competitively as a district and as a community.”

Boyd said the budget has prioritized salary and wage increases for the past several years because personnel makes up 85-percent of the school system budget.

“We want to continue to be competitive across the State of Tennessee and Southeast region with attracting and training the best employees,” Boyd said. “That’s why every year, to stay at the pace that we need, we have to have that conversation about salary increases because we are behind. If we can’t fix it all at once, every year we’ve got to make progress.”

School employees received a two-percent raise last year, but Boyd did not provide any specific amounts for raises this year.

A first draft of the school budget will be presented to the county commission next month.