News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Dekalb County School System is taking a budget that includes raises throughout the school system to the county commission.
Director of Schools Patrick Cripps said he believes $5,000 raises for teachers and $3,000 for support staff is possible due to how the budget has been managed. Cripps said the competition for quality educators keeps growing and the system needs a way to stand out.
“We’re surrounded by bigger counties all the way around us and we continue to lose faculty and staff each year to surrounding counties,” Cripps said. “We just want to be able to compete with or come as close as we can to compete.”
Cripps said the budget also includes per day raises for bus drivers at all levels and increase of $715 in supplement pay for middle and high school coaches. Cripps said he is presenting the budget to the county on Tuesday night with the mind set of, “you don’t know until you ask.”
“We’ve done a really good job in being able to put back money in our reserves every year that I’ve been here,” Cripps said. “I’m going into my 7th year, so we’ve built our reserves up and haven’t had to dip into our reserves. I hope that people see that we’ve managed it well and we don’t want to do anything that would put anybody in jeopardy or anything like that.”
Cripps said he stands by his belief that strong schools foster a strong community. He said that is why they wanted to increase pay for everyone in the system to show every job and every role makes success possible.
“The kids that are exiting our schools are our future leaders of Dekalb County,” Cripps said. “We want to be able to give them the best education and in order for us to do that we need to get the best educators that we can and to do that we need to have competing salaries.”
Cripps said this is not just about bringing in new teachers, it is about rewarding the work that existing employees have put in. He said Dekalb County has to show that it is a place worth staying to teach and coming into to teach.
