The North East Independent School District board of trustees voted Monday to give teachers and staff one of the largest salary raises in 20 years, despite a lack of funding from the Texas Legislature.
The nearly $35 million compensation package includes a one-time retention supplement and will impact all eligible employees, according to the district, with more than half of the funding benefiting teachers, counselors, librarians and nurses. Employees are eligible if they worked at least 90 days in the 2022-23 school year.
Returning NEISD teachers and librarians will receive targeted adjustments so that their salary is more in line with market comparison data based on their years of experience, the district said.
The pay increase follows a similar historic move by San Antonio Independent School District in April. The Northside Independent School District will review a compensation plan Tuesday night.
At a minimum, eligible hourly employees at NEISD will receive a 6% increase and eligible professional employees will receive a 4% increase from the midpoint of the proposed pay ranges.
In addition to the general raises, other hard-to-fill positions in the district, including bus drivers, custodians, general education and special education assistants, will receive targeted adjustments under the new plan.
All eligible NEISD employees will also receive a 2% retention incentive in November, funded through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER).
The funds were provided by the federal government following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re looking for ways to offset the inflation that is impacting everyone,” NEISD Superintendent Sean Maika said in a statement. “We’re trying to give what we can back to employees.”
Raise comes at a cost
School leaders across Bexar County this year have highlighted the dire impacts of inflation, and the necessity of increased state funding.
Given the lack of legislative funding, NEISD district officials said the raise will need to be offset by “cost savings throughout the district over the next several years.”
“Programs, practices and procedures will be analyzed for efficiency and effectiveness in alignment with the Balanced District Scorecard,” the district said in a statement.
The district plans on finding ways to save $10 million each year for the next three years in order to offset a deficit estimated to be more than $39 million generated as a result of the raise, Maika told board members.
Those changes will be achieved through efficiencies and not cuts, Maika stressed.
A district spokeswoman said Tuesday that no specific programs have been identified for analysis at this time.
NEISD Trustee Diane Sciba Villarreal asked if the district could find ways to increase pay even more, citing the wages at local businesses like Home Depot and QuikTrip.
Maika said that was possible, but underscored the unique position schools are in.
“We’ve always struggled to compete with private industry,” he said. “Because they have ways to generate new revenue and we simply do not.”
He also told the board the district was opting for targeted pay increases, instead of across-the-board raises, in order to resolve inequities district staff identified in the existing pay scale over the last year.
SAISD, in dealing with its own projected budget deficits, also announced administrative cuts in order to offset its round of raises, with more drastic action planned to “right-size” the district in light of falling enrollment.
A proposed resolution that is expected to be voted on later this month lays bare the position the district is in, with enrollment decreasing from 61,112 in 1998 to 45,285 this year — a decline of 15,287 over the past 25 years.
That decline leaves the district’s enrollment 4,200 students lower than the “worst case scenario projected by an independent demographer” in the 2010-2011 school year, according to a draft of the resolution.
Despite the decline, the district has maintained many of its campuses, leading to only 48% of facilities across the district being utilized, with millions of dollars going toward maintenance and operation of the half-empty buildings.
The resolution, if passed, would direct the superintendent and district staff to complete a study of excess capacity in SAISD’s school buildings to “assess each school’s staffing levels and programming and maintenance conditions in order to determine our ability to deliver on the expectations of … a thriving educational program.”
The conclusion of the study will include “right-sizing recommendations that aim to address the inequitable distribution of resources among schools and create improved opportunities for all SAISD students to attend a thriving school.”
Special session to address education issues
State leaders including Gov. Greg Abbott made school funding and school choice top issues during the regular legislative session. It ended last month without any raises for teachers despite several bills that would have provided varying levels of funding.
One bill that public school advocates begrudgingly supported was House Bill 100, which would have given $4.5 billion more to schools, a substantial investment, but one that local leaders said would do little given the rate of inflation and other factors that have impacted school funding.
That measure failed after the Texas Senate amended it to include language that would establish Education Savings Accounts, which would allow public funds to be used for private schools. The House rejected those changes, killing the bill.
Abbott has vowed to call a special session focused on education, however, and House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) has established a select Committee on Educational Opportunity and Enrichment in response.
“With a special session on education matters all but certain, the select committee will begin working immediately to develop a workable roadmap for legislation in the House,” Phelan announced Monday.
State Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins (D-San Antonio) will be the vice-chair of the bipartisan select committee, which will be made up of 15 lawmakers according to a proclamation by Phelan.
NEISD district officials said Monday that they would be keeping an eye on any potential special sessions and return to the board with any required changes or updates to compensation in case new laws are passed.
