The Killeen ISD school board approved its largest pay raise to date for more than 6000 district employees.
Now teachers with no prior teaching experience can earn $56,000 from the previous rate of $52,000. Teachers with 20 years of experience get $64,000. Other non-education staff get an increase in their compensation too.
This may be good news for KISD teachers and future candidates but it may affect other school districts with their hiring process educational professionals say.
The vice president of the KISD school board said:
“For the other districts there gonna have to really dig deep to find out what they can offer but KISD is my concern at this moment not to be remiss of the struggles across the state but our military children and our community children are very important.”
Kileen ISD caters to the families of the USA's largest military installation in Fort Hood.
The school board is now focusing on the needs of Killeen ISD and a raise in pay is one of them.
Another KISD board member, Cullen Mills spoke up on the decision to raise teacher salaries by 8 percent.
Mills said, “I just felt like this was necessary we needed to sure up to the positions as our teachers are stretched thin... our staff are stretched thin.”
Since the beginning of the pandemic teachers have taken a hit and Mills believes this is the well-deserved breakthrough for teachers and staff at KISD.
Mills added, “We understand that this isn’t a magic wand that fixes everything, but it does give us leverage and puts a target out there that we a destination district for folks to come work at.”
The school district is making the positions attractive to hire more teachers and retain the ones currently with the district.
Vice President of KISD school board Jones said:
“We owe it to our service members and to our community to have the best-qualified teachers and we need to reward them.”
That rewarding compensation plan also comes with a stipend for the hard-to-fill positions and a stipend for relocation costs.
