About 3,000 Atlanta school district teachers and staff would get pay raises under an $11 million plan the school board is set to vote on Monday.
The plan is not an across-the-board pay hike. Instead, it aims to bring staff affected by years of pay freezes up to par with new employees hired during those years.
“We have to show all of our employees that we value them,” board member Jason Esteves said at a budget commission meeting Thursday.
Atlanta teachers are already some of the best-paid in the region.
The raises are about fairness, district human resources chief Pamela Hall said.
Atlanta Public Schools employees received raises last year. Before that, the last year they got raises was 2009, Hall said.
But over those years, as the district recruited teachers to take the places of those removed after being implicated in the Atlanta test-cheating scandal and fill other vacancies, new teachers were hired at salaries higher than those of existing employees with the same years of experience.
“They had to do something drastic to attract people to come here,” Hall said. “When you do that over 5 years it really builds up.”
At the start of this school year, Atlanta had nine teacher vacancies.
The $11 million plan is the result of a district-wide study of how much Atlanta school employees are paid. That study found Atlanta teachers and other staff make more than their peers locally and nationally.
It also found wide disparities in pay within the district. In some cases, people can earn as much as 67 percent more than someone else with the same job within the district.
About 2,680 teachers and other staff earn more than what the district considers the top pay for their jobs. Under the plan to be considered Monday, their pay would be frozen.
Teachers who missed out on past pay raises for years of experience would see their salaries raised.
And pay for non-teaching employees would be brought up to newly established minimum levels. Those employees would also get raises based on their years of service to APS.
If the board approves the plan Monday, employees would receive raises in November, including retroactive pay to the start of this school year.
Raises this year could be part one of an overhaul of APS’ pay system. The overhaul calls for a series of cost-of-living adjustments and other raises over the next three years. The total annual price tag for the overhaul would be about $31 million.
But Hall said the district isn’t making any promises about future raises.
“It is our hope that every year we will be able to do a step increase or a COLA,” she said. But “We can’t make guarantees.”
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