Employee compensation dominated a lightly attended public hearing Tuesday on Williamsburg-James City County Schools’ upcoming budget.
Two people spoke during a public hearing on the school division’s budget at last night’s School Board meeting. Both urged board members to include employee compensation as a main point in the next budget.
Williamsburg-James City Education Association president Amelie Drake encouraged the School Board to consider raises and pay scale changes for faculty and staff as part of their ongoing budget process.
Last year’s budget included a 1 percent pay raise and a 3.42 percent pay increase for employees, partially to offset increases in state-mandated employee contributions to the Virginia Retirement System.
Changes to the pay scale also boosted starting teacher salaries by 3 percent, to $40,301, and added a Step 24 to the pay schedule.
Drake, who also works as a teacher at D.J. Montague Elementary School, said the pay increases were appreciated by teachers but did not significantly affect take-home pay.
“We ask you to recognize how many staff work second jobs, or struggle to make ends meet,” Drake said.
Drake said hiring the best teachers and staff would help maintain WJCC as a premier school division, and an improved pay scale would help retain those employees.
Kim Hundley, another member of the WJCEA, also spoke in favor of boosting employee compensation.
After the meeting, School Board Chairman Jim Kelly (Jamestown) said compensation would likely come up during the board’s budget discussions.
“We want to do everything we can for our staff,” he said. “We’ll just see where the numbers fall out. Certainly the board has shown interest in supporting [it].”
The average teacher salary in Virginia was $52,932 for fiscal year 2013, the most recent year with recorded data. The average teacher salary in WJCC Schools for the same period was $52,037, lower than the state average.
No other speakers commented during the hearing.
Kelly said the low turnout was not unexpected, as the hearing was the first public comment scheduled during the budget process, and the threat of budget cuts has diminished in the wake of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s budget recommendations, which preserve education funding for the next year.
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