WFISD board holds off on teacher pay increases

June 14--Teachers will have to wait until later in the summer to find out about a pay increase.

The Wichita Falls ISD board of trustees at its June 13 special session decided to hold off on approving a recommended pay increase -- the last cog in the wheel needed to complete the district's 2017-18 budget. It also was information the district hoped to have in hand as it continues to hire teachers over the summer. However, the trustees did give the thumbs up on increasing various stipends.

The sticky wicket in implementing a pay bump is the special session of the Texas Legislature, called June 6 by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Abbott is asking lawmakers to approve a $1,000 pay raise for public school teachers, which would play into what the Wichita Falls ISD school board will do with its own teacher salaries.

Trustee Elizabeth Yeager said she's struggling with the governor's "unfunded mandate": "I'm a little leery of saying yes to increasing salaries with that (the state's proposed $1,000 pay raise) coming down the road," adding that she would feel more comfortable taking action after the special session.

The other jam up is that the district's finance team cannot finalize a budget to present to the board, usually something done in August, until increases in salaries and stipends are also finalized.

However, Superintendent Michael Kuhrt said the finance team in the interim will move forward planning a budget using proposed salary increases so a budget will be ready to go if a state-mandated $1,000 teacher pay raise does not come to fruition. If it does, then the administration will start again.

It was in April, during a work session, that the trustees and administration talked about increasing the district's starting pay for zero-year teachers -- new educators with no previous teaching experience -- by $500, from $43,000 to $43,500, which would in turn increase all salary "steps" by $500. In addition to that $500 bump, the Wichita Falls ISD wanted to add a separate increase for each step, or level of experience.

After crunching the numbers, "Originally, we wanted to do a $500 increase, plus a step increase, but that's too expensive," Kuhrt said.

What is now being proposed -- though the board took no action and tabled the matter -- is upping the starting pay for first-year teachers from $43,000 to $43,200, which would mean a $200 increase per step in the hiring schedule for teachers, librarians and nurses. The cost to the district to do that would be a little more than $1,590,000.

In addition, teachers, librarians and nurses would get an additional step increase, and all other staff members would receive a 1 percent increase.

The total cost to the district would be about $1.83 million.

However, "We would be facing a $574,000 deficit budget if we do those things," Kuhrt said. He added that it would be his job to find somewhere to cut $574,000 so the administration could present a balanced budget.

The district already has made about $1 million in budget cuts, about $300,000 from school campuses and $700,000 from district departments.

"We did cut as many department budgets that we could," said Chief Financial Officer Tim Sherrod, adding that budgets weren't cut by more than 15 percent.

The outlook could have been worse.

The Texas Legislature, before the special session, was looking at reorganizing the Teacher Retirement System of Texas' ActiveCare, the health insurance program for many of the state's educators. It would have meant a big increase in health insurance costs and likely a $2.3 million budget deficit for the district.

But that proposal was nixed

What remains now is to wait until the Texas Legislature's special session is wrapped up to know how to go forward with salary changes.

Despite taking no action when it came to a salary bump for teachers, the school board did approve changes to various extra-duty stipends.

Athletic stipends at the middle schools were adjusted to better reflect responsibilities. Also increased were the assistant band director stipends at the middle schools and assistant choir director stipends at the high schools, and a stipend was added for drama teachers at the middle schools.

An athletic coordinator at the middle schools, for example, will receive an increase of $250 in their stipend, going from $750 in 2016-17 to $1,000 in 2017-18.

Assistant middle school band directors are getting a stipend bump from $2,500 to $3,500. Assistant high school choir directors will go from a stipend of $2,500 last year to $3,000 this year.

The new middle school drama director stipend is $1,000.

Also at the meeting, the board:

* Received an update on the Career Education Center. According to Associate Superintendent Peter Griffiths, "We're still on schedule and on time to get in there." The district is hoping to start delivering furniture by July 17.

* Discussed plans for a Barwise weight room, the next athletic project at the middle school as work has begun this week on replacing Barwise's track. The low bid for the weight room was $205,900 by Clark Construction, which exceeded the estimated cost of $130,000. The board is looking into using portables for a weight room instead of building one.

* Approved awarding the cleaning and G-max testing of all the district's synthetic turf fields to two vendors, Hellas Construction for $17,500 for cleaning and Champion Track and Turf Repair in the amount of $3,000 for G-max testing.

* Approved 1:1 Chromebook and Desktop Refresh purchases to the Delcom Group and Troxell.

* Discussed awarding basic life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance to Lincoln National for $.045 for basic life and $.020 for AD&D per $1,000. It is a multi-year bid.

* Discussed accepting the new software license agreement for Skyward

* Approved test and balance professional services at the Career Education Center to Steward Environmental for $81,136. The service is for testing heating and air-conditioning systems installed at the CEC.

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