Before formally approving a budget for the next school year, the San Antonio Independent School District’s board of trustees approved raises for teachers, paraprofessionals and other support staff at a meeting on Monday.
Overall, teacher pay will get a 3% increase, raising the minimum teacher salary for a new employee to $60,000. All remaining full-time teachers will also get a 3% bump in their current pay.
Paraprofessional, instructional assistants and transportation workers will get a 4% increase, increasing the minimum entry-level pay to $17 an hour.
The board also approved a slew of additional compensation initiatives including $3,000 sing-on bonuses for members of the police department, elevated pay grades for head custodians and other support staff and one-time $500 longevity stipends for all full-time employees who’ve been with SAISD for 15 years.
In total, the raises will cost SAISD $14.6 million.
Currently, the district has a $51 million “structural deficit,” a number they hope to cut by $17 million this year.
In March, trustees approved a round of cuts to the central office staff, a cost-saving measure SAISD has used every year since 2023, Superintendent Jaime Aquino said Monday. The district has not specified how many positions are being eliminated.
Last year, the district also approved more than a dozen school closures due to low enrollment.
The district is also cutting elective programs, including Leadership Officer Training Corps (LOTC), a middle-school leadership class that teaches students about achievement, wellness, leadership and diversity — saving the district less than $1 million.
Most school districts in Texas are facing budget deficits, according to a survey from the Texas Association of School Business Officials.
Public school advocates say the state needs to increase the basic student allotment by more than $1,000 per pupil to combat budget challenges. Texas has not increased the base funding, $6,160, since 2019 despite rising inflation and having a surplus of funds in the state’s budget.
Trustee Leticia Ozuna questioned whether considering pay raises was “timely” given the funding uncertainty from the state and federal governments and asked whether the board could revisit compensation after the state legislative session wraps up in June.
“I’m just really hesitant on taking such a step, just knowing, like, you know we can see the storm, you know ahead and you know what’s coming,” Ozuna said.
But district officials recommended passing a compensation package before the board’s June 23 budget adoption, because approval would have a direct impact on the district’s ability to successfully and timely recruit and hire personnel for the 2025-26 school year.
Discussion of compensation came after hearing testimony from several members of the San Antonio Alliance, a school worker’s union for SAISD’s employees, asking the board to adopt a resolution in support of an Educator’s Bill of Rights. The bill advocates for fair wages and reasonable working conditions among other things, and the union collected 1,500 signatures in support of the resolution from staff across the district.
“We were told that [school] closures will lead to better services. Instead, our classrooms are overcrowded. Teachers are stretched thin, and support staff are still under pain and overworked,” Zuriel Morales, a science teacher at St. Phillip’s College Early College High School, told trustees.
“Aside from compensation, there is a desperate need at my campus for a working HVAC system and a reasonable class size policy,” Miranda Yzaguirre, a sixth grade teacher at Woodlawn Academy, said.
Wage raises for head custodians were recommended in part because of their extra workloads during HVAC system issues across several of SAISD’s campuses, district officials said.
“We wanted to acknowledge the more complex work that our custodians are doing compared to others in the region,” chief of human capital management James Harrell said.
Currently, SAISD only has one boiler technician who can work on HVAC systems for the entire district.
“Even though district officials, including Aquino, Harrell and chief financial officer Dottie Carreon suggested the board approve a smaller pay package created in the case that the district does not receive additional funding from the state this year — 1% for teachers, 2% for instructional support staff with the same compensation initiatives — trustees unanimously approved the higher package.
The board’s approval of the compensation package is contingent upon any teacher pay laws that come out of the 89th Legislative Session, which kicked off in January and ends June 2.”
“We cannot afford a compensation increase. However, our staff also need to be able to cope with the 22% national inflation,” Aquino said.
