Thursday, May 2, 2024
The Granbury ISD board of trustees voted to give a 3% pay raise to all current staff and raise the minimum wage to $15, during its monthly meeting on June 13.
Emmett Whitefield, GISD’s chief financial officer, explained during the meeting that the average increase to teacher and librarian salaries would equal $1,850, which is equivalent to a 3% raise for other employees.
In addition, the district also increased hourly wages for bus drivers to $18 an hour, and bus driver leads to $19 an hour.
Whitefield concluded his report, explaining that all pay schedules have also been adjusted — bringing all district pay grades above $15 an hour.
"When we sat down and had this conversation, we decided we would take care of our low-end employees first,” GISD Superintendent Jeremy Glenn explained during the meeting. “We have people that are making $10 or $12 an hour. We feel like with 14% inflation hitting the country, we needed to make sure those individuals were taken care of first. So, we're taking our minimum wage up to $15, which is a pretty substantial cost considering we have 1,200 employees.”
Glenn explained that with Granbury ISD being 10% behind other schools in the area in pay scale, the district is at a disadvantage as staff will eventually depart to pursue higher-paying jobs.
"What burdens us is the 3% raise for everybody else, knowing that likely even with this legislative session not seeing an increase in the basic allotment, those districts that are 10% or more ahead of us will likely give at least a 3% (raise) which is going to continue to keep us at a disadvantage in recruiting staff,” he said.
Glenn said that the district still has some ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds left over following COVID-19, but that the funds are almost depleted.
"We're going to divide what money that is (left over) equally amongst our teachers in a retention stipend to thank those individuals who've stayed with Granbury ISD, but we've done that three times now over the last three years with our federal money trying to take care of our staff,” he said. “That money will be exhausted at the end of this year, so we've got to look at something more long term to take care of our staff.”
Board President Barbara Herrington said that the biggest letdown is not seeing any funds from the state’s $33 billion surplus that was announced in January.
“When they were talking about pulling (those funds into) tax relief or taxpayers across this state putting it into teacher salaries, I thought, ‘Yes,’” Herrington said. “Well, my letters to my legislators and my governor have not been too nice, because if they didn't intend to do that, they shouldn't have promised it in January. All of us got our hopes up that we would be able to do something really good for teachers this year, and they just popped that bubble bigger than life.”
“I've been down in Austin three times during this last legislative session, completely frustrated with the legislature for not putting up for our teachers, not only in Granbury, but statewide,” said Board Member Billy Wimberly. “It's a travesty. I would not vote down any increase, but we need to get more and we'll keep working on this for our teachers to try and get them more pay.”
The board unanimously approved salary increases for 12-month employees for the 2023-24 academic year.
"We've wrung our hands over this watching the legislative session play out the last few months,” Glenn added. “It's disheartening to say the least, to see the state with a $33 billion surplus, and districts like Granbury didn't even see a small increase in the basic allotment. But certainly, there's an opportunity for things to change.”
