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Teacher pay raises and tastier meals were the main topics in the Pulaski County Schools ‘special called’ board meeting Friday.
Superintendent Pat Richardson talked in great lengths about Kentucky House Bill 6 (HB6) and how it might relate to future teacher pay raises. He also outlined their plan to upgrade the school lunches and the school system’s food services.
While House Bill 6 might be touted as a way to financially bulk up the local school’s budget, very little of those funds will probably go towards teacher pay raises.
Despite an increase of $484 million in the overall department of education budget, $393.9 million of that will be allocated for the increase of employee’s health insurance and $38.9 million is allocated for the increase of the Kentucky Teachers Retirement System’s employer match.
“There are a lot of numbers flying around (about teacher salary raises),” Richardson warned. “There is a 11% proposed raise for school employees in the governor’s budget, and there is a 4% proposed increase to the Guaranteed Base SEEK [funding] in House Bill 6.”
However, Richardson warned that neither the 11% or 4% increases would actually be seen in the teacher’s pay checks next school year, and he explained how these two numbers might have been derived.
SEEK (Support Education Excellence in Kentucky) is a funding program with a formula driven allocation of state provided funds to local school districts. The formula includes funding for transportation costs and special needs students as reported by districts.
And while there will be a 4% ($168 million) increase in 2024-25 SEEK funding, only $41 million will be state funded and the remaining $127 million will come from local property taxes.
According to Richardson, a 1% pay increase for all school employees would cost the school system $500,000, not to mention another $600,000 in Plus Step and Rank increases each year. Therefore, a mere 1% pay raise for all school personnel would cost the school system almost $1.1 million per year.
“Using every dime provided by the state that could be used towards employee raises, HB6 could potentially provide a 1.5% raise in the 2024-25 school year and a 1.25% raise in the 2025-26 school year,” Richardson stated.
Richardson warned that giving raises above those state funded amounts could only be maintained through program cuts or staff cuts.
In the school year of 2019-20, before the pandemic, a first-year school teacher in Pulaski County earned a salary of $36,628.
In 2023-24, a first-year teacher in Pulaski County made $38,490. However, that $38,490 today has the same buying power as $34,256 in the 2019-20 school year. The buying power of today’s teacher in Pulaski County is down around 11% from before the pandemic.
In comparison to Pulaski County’s current first-year teacher salaries, other nearby states have much higher teaching salaries. Over four years, Tennessee’s starting teacher salaries are at $50,000. By 2026, the South Carolina teacher starting salary will be $50,000. The current starting teacher’s salary in Florida is $47,000. By 2024, the average teacher salary in Indiana will be at $60,000.
According to Richardson, school systems in Kentucky are at a critical stage of workforce shortages, which includes educators and school support staff.
“We must have recurring funds to improve salaries to better compete to attract and retain the best quality people to work with and around our students,” Richardson stated.
Richardson also stated that it is important to educate our community about K-12 school funding.
“A common misconception is how do we have funds for school construction, but are unable to provide meaningful teacher pay raises,” Richardson said. “School construction funds are only permitted to be used for school construction projects.”
Case in point, the Pulaski County Schools are spending nearly $10 million on their two 15,000-square foot Wellness Centers, which is funded by Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds and bonding. The $32 million construction of the Burnside Elementary School is funded through bonding, as was the turfing of the two high football fields. Bonding money can only be used by the schools for construction purposes.
On the subject of school lunches, Richardson laid out a plan for better food services by providing a better meal experience for their students.
They plan to increase the cook’s daily hours to eight hours per day, which is an increase from their current five to six hours per day. The extra hours could be used for planning and prepping for the next day’s meals, as well as other added services. Also, they want to give a pay raise of 50 cents per hour to each cook. The hopes of these increased hours and pay hikes will help with the school’s food service staffing.
Also, the school system wants to change the way they serve their lunches to students. Because of the pandemic, the cooks were giving food portions to the students in styrofoam containers. They now plan on letting students spoon out their own entree portions onto their individual trays.
“We do use a lot of containers, it looks very industrial, and it all comes because of the pandemic and portion sizes,” Richardson stated. “Also because we don’t have enough cooks to monitor the line, they were putting food in containers so they (students) can reach and grab.
“Hopefully, at the middle schools and high schools, the students will start serving themselves with the entrees,” he stated.”We’re moving back to the self-serve on a lot of the items, which will allow them [the students] to get a little more portion size and also less use of the styrofoam containers.”
Also lost during the pandemic, the salad bars and the pizza bars will return at the middle schools and high schools. These bars require more staffing to maintain, which should be covered by the planned food services increased hours and pay raises.
Richardson stated that they wanted to change the way they approached meal planning for the students, because they feel today’s students would like to see more restaurant style food preparation. His staff feels that the students should have some input on what type of meals and food the schools will prepare in the future. They also want to train their cooks on preparing food differently or creating different types of entrees.
“We want to make our meals more appealing to the kids through different types of meal planning with that same type of food,” Richardson stated. [As an example] We can give them some variety in seeing the way that chicken nuggets or chicken tenders are presented. We’ve talked about scheduling some trainings for our cooks. We just don’t know that we’re quite there yet, but in the future a chef could come in and show examples to our cooks and show how to develop different types of meals.”
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