August 4, 2024
By: Dwayne Page
The first full week of school begins Monday, August 5 and with it comes pay raises for DeKalb County teachers and support staff for the 2024-25 year.
In June, the county commission adopted, as approved by the board of education and county budget committee, the school budget for the new year which includes salary increases of $2,000 to $6,000 for employees based on years of service. The cost of the pay raises with matching benefits, according to Director of Schools Patrick Cripps comes to $1.72 million dollars which will be absorbed in the school budget from available funds and reserves along with projected increases in employee health care insurance premiums.
The new school budget provides for a $2,000 pay increase to employees (certified educators and support staff) with up to 9 years of service (155 employees); $5,000 for those with 10-19 years (104 employees); and $6,000 to staff with 20 or more years (108 employees).
In addition to an annual local option sales tax allocation from the county, a total of 0.5298 cents of the county’s $2.51 property tax levy per $100 of assessed value goes to help fund the DeKalb County School District. That equates to around $62,000 per one cent of the tax rate
The county budget committee’s original proposal was to increase the total property tax levy for schools by 10 cents (generating $630,000 in new money) but prior to adoption of the consolidated budgets in June, the county commission instead opted to appropriate to schools another $370,000 from the local purpose (sales tax) fund giving schools a total contribution annually of $1,910,000 which is an increase from the $1,540,000 the county had been allocating from the sales tax fund each year for school operation.
In late May, Director of Schools Cripps addressed the county budget committee asking for more funding to help with pay raises, saying the local school system was losing veteran teachers to other districts that pay better.
Cripps explained that while starting pay for local teachers at $50,000 per year is among the highest in the state, DeKalb County lags behind in pay for teachers with longer years of service. Because of that, Cripps said several local teachers have left to take jobs elsewhere like the Rutherford County school district where they can earn more money. The pay increases in this budget Cripps explained would “get that back end pay up to where we are at least competing with counties surrounding us”.
“A couple of years ago the state mandated that in the year 2026 all starting salaries for teachers had to be at $50,000. We are at that point currently. We are in the top seven for starting salaries,” said Director Cripps. “But when you look at back end pay for our educators, those with 20 plus years, we are ranked at 70th in the state,” said Cripps.
“Starting teacher pay right now is about $50,200 but a teacher with 20 plus years of experience is at about $59,000. There is a shortage of teachers across the state and what we are seeing is the days of keeping home grown teachers here is about over. Everybody is now going after their top five. What that means is when a teacher gets to look at their retirement they look at their highest five years of consecutive employment. When you look at Rutherford County, a person with an Eds and 20 plus years makes $86,000. We (DeKalb) are way short of that at $66,000. We are battling keeping our experienced teachers with us, those that can groom the new teachers. What we are now seeing is we are getting new teachers but losing back end (veteran) teachers. What we did with our budget this year is to stair step it so we can start increasing that back end pay because after 19 years on our pay scale there are no more pay raises for teachers or 10 years for non-certified personnel unless it comes from the county,” said Cripps.
Meanwhile, another new school resource officer position has been added for the DeKalb County School District filled by a female officer starting with the 2024-25 school year bringing the total number of SROs locally to six. The other current five SROs, funded by the state, are all men assigned one each to Smithville Elementary, Northside Elementary, DeKalb West, DeKalb Middle, and DeKalb County High School.
“We plan to put this female deputy as an SRO at the DeKalb Middle School/DCHS complex. She will be a rover between those schools unless an SRO is absent on a given day at one of the other schools, then she would substitute for that SRO there,” said Sheriff Patrick Ray.
This new SRO has been working for some time as a deputy for the sheriff’s department and her base pay this past year was $50,601 plus benefits according to her salary tier level with the sheriff’s department.