School Employee Salaries Part Of Preliminary Clay Schools Budget Talks

Teacher and faculty salaries were the main topic of discussion at Clay County Schools’ first budget committee.

School Board Chair Benji Bailey said that the biggest difficulty was giving faculty and staff much-need raises but finding the money to do it.

“The increase in funding from BEP presents an opportunity to provide increases,” Bailey said. “It’s still not what they deserve. The funding is still not fully funded either. But, we’re able to at least consider that point for both our teachers and our non-certified personnel.”

In the proposed budget, all teachers would receive a five percent raise to help reach the state’s goal of a $40,000 minimum starting salary. Board members asked Finance Director Ashley Holmes to explore a budget option that would raise non-certified personnel’s minimum wage from $9.69 to $11.

Director of Schools Diana Monroe said that one of her goals in her first budget as director was to try to find ways to better compensate employees and stay competitive with surrounding counties. She said that she asked Holmes to explore potential options to present to the school board for its budget.

“I took a picture of a sign today and the sign at Chick-fil-a: Full-time starts at $17 an hour, part-time starts at $14 an hour. And that’s at Chick-fil-a,” Monroe said. “I don’t see how people make $9.69 an hour go to the grocery store, I don’t see how they pay the electric bill, and they sure can’t afford a house payment. And if they don’t have a spouse helping out, I don’t know how they do it.”

Board Member Nathan Sherrell said that he agreed that employees need better compensation, but was concerned about how that would eat at the budget. He said that one of his biggest concerns would be that in order to offset increased costs because of salaries, they would have to remove positions.