By Claire Hamlet
The Lexington City and Rockbridge County school boards want to boost teachers’ salaries next year, but they’re waiting on the General Assembly to finalize the state’s budget to figure out how much they can pay.
Rebecca Walters, superintendent of Lexington City Schools, said the school board wants to increase pay by 3% for all district employees. Teachers would get roughly 1.5% as part of annual step increases. They’d also get about an additional 1.5% raise.
If approved, it would be the third consecutive year that Lexington teachers received a raise.
“We continue to seek competitive salary increases for all our employees,” Walters said in a Feb. 6 school board meeting. “We can’t have great schools without great teachers and staff.”
Phillip Thompson, superintendent of Rockbridge County Public Schools, said the county school board doesn’t know yet how much of a raise it can give teachers next year. But the board is planning to give teachers their annual step bumps, which are between 1% and 1.5%.
“We want more competitive salaries because we want to hire and retain the best,” he said in an interview.
The House of Delegates and the Senate are still wrangling over the state’s budget. Once it’s approved, it goes to Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Then, the state Department of Education would distribute money to school districts and localities.
Hearing from teachers
Patrick Bradley, a Latin teacher at Rockbridge County High School, said many teachers don’t make enough money and must hold second jobs. This is especially true if they don’t have a partner bringing in another income, he said.
“The school board and county administration understand that we’re not getting paid enough,” Bradley said. “The board of supervisors is not interested in funding schools to the extent they should.”
He said the raises sound better than they are. “You’d be surprised how compressed the pay scale is. I’ve been teaching for 30 years, and I don’t make much more than the starting salary,” Bradley said.
In the county, the starting salary for a teacher is $43,500. In the city, it’s $43,602.
Bradley said even though teachers have received an increase in salaries in the last few years, “it does not keep up with the cost of living.”
A city schools’ teacher with three years’ experience said she is leaving her job because she needs to make more money. The teacher asked that her identity remain confidential for fear of being fired. She said many teachers are leaving the district for more competitive wages despite the district’s attempts to raise salaries.
“We want to make sure we have competitive salaries,” Phillip Thompson said. “Unfortunately, it just gets more expensive every year to run a school.”
The city teacher said she works a second job. Bradley said he knows of several county teachers who also have other jobs.
“It’s not a raise like you’d think,” the city teacher said. “If you’ve worked a certain number of years, you automatically jump up in the salary scale, and if you jump up, you don’t get the raise. They subtract the raise.”
Teachers’ salaries increase annually as they gain experience, which translates into “steps” in the pay scale.
“When the school board raises teacher salaries across the board, the raise generally includes a percentage increase to the steps on the salary scale as well as a ‘raise,’” Walters said in an email.
For example, she said, if the budget includes a 3% raise, it’s split between a 1.5% step increase and a 1.5% raise.
The city teacher said she would make more money at the county schools.
To make it worse, she said, teachers often use personal funds to purchase classroom supplies.
“Every teacher spends their own money,” she said. “You can think ahead, but when the time comes, you might need more construction paper, or whatever it is.”
She said the school’s Parent-Teacher Association helps teachers purchase supplies by providing small stipends.
“They also give us $25 for self-care,” the city teacher said. “You can spend it on anything, like getting your nails done or buying a book you want to read.”
Some teachers also turn to Teachers Pay Teachers, a website that connects teachers so they can exchange supplies and lesson plans. Teachers Pay Teachers was created in New York in 2006 by Paul Edelman, a former public school teacher, according to its website.
Issues of raising pay
Thompson said the county wants to raise teacher pay to help attract and retain educators in the district.
“We want to make sure we have competitive salaries,” he said. “Unfortunately, it just gets more expensive every year to run a school.”
He said the price of fuel, computer software and hardware, service contracts and even paper has increased.
Walters also said rising costs have strained the city’s budget.
In past couple of years, she said, the district wanted to add field trips and instructional materials. “We don’t have that in this budget,” she said in the Feb. 6 school board meeting, “because we have operational costs that are increasing.”