School board wants higher teacher salaries
by Larry S. Chowning
Some members of the Middlesex County School Board let it be known Monday that they will ask for pay raises for county teachers during upcoming talks on the 2010-11 (FY11) school budget.
Middlesex Elementary School principal Jeannie White Duke and St. Clare Walker principal and assistant school superintendent James Lane said top budget priorities at their schools are to increase teacher salaries to keep the present teaching staff intact.
“We have a good teaching staff at MES,” said Duke. “We don’t want to lose our teachers to other divisions over salaries.”
School board member Richard Shores said he wants school teachers to get at least a 3% raise this year in an effort to “catch up” for not giving raises last year.
School board member Lee Walton said there will be no catch-up because Middlesex teacher salaries are already behind many neighboring school divisions. “We are talking about cost-of-living increases because the cost of living continues to go up for everyone.”
Walton noted that other school divisions probably will not give huge salary increases in these hard economic times, but some Middlesex teachers may opt to accept jobs elsewhere because their current salaries are so much lower than what they would receive in many other school divisions.
School board member Elliott Reed said, “I’d love to give teachers a 5% raise this year, but it’s not realistic to even consider it. I feel this board will do everything it can to get teacher salaries up, and I hope the board of supervisors will support us.”
Shores showed some frustration toward the board of supervisors. He indicated that every year when the school budget process comes along and things are cut from the budget, supervisors try to dodge responsibility for the cuts.
“Supervisors say we give the school board a lump sum of money and school officials decide what is cut—not the supervisors,” said Shores. “It’s a false statement. We can’t take money for books and put it into salaries. If we don’t have enough funds to run the school buses, we can’t put it into salaries. Do not applaud the supervisors when they say it’s not their fault.”
Board chairperson Beth Hurd said she feels teacher salaries have been a top priority for many years, but added that she is concerned about other areas as well. “We have gone many years without new things,” she said. “We have not kept up with buying new school buses each year and we have not kept up with advances in technology.
“It doesn’t make good financial sense to think that we can buy 10 school buses in one year,” Hurd said. “We can’t afford it. We used to buy two buses a year, but we haven’t done that since I’ve been on the board. At some point, all this is going to reach a breaking point.”
School superintendent Rusty Fairheart said the school system’s top priorities are to “enhance and maintain student achievement”; to encourage the present workforce to stay through giving raises and other incentives; to make the entire organization more efficient; and prioritize any issues concerning school safety.
Fairheart informed the school board that Middlesex County’s composite index has increased, which means the county will lose about $300,000 in state aid to schools in FY11 (see related story - An interview with Rusty Fairheart).
