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Published: 2022-08-16 18:35:00
Updated: 2022-08-16 18:35:00
Posted August 16, 2022 6:35 p.m. EDT
By Emily Walkenhorst, WRAL education reporter
Cary, N.C. — Wake County Public School System employees can expect pay increases this year beyond those that were recently approved in the new state budget.
The Wake County Board of Education approved a $2.3 billion budget for this fiscal year Tuesday night that adds some additional wage increases for hourly workers and local supplement increases for educators.
The budget also includes staffing for four new schools, maintenance, special education and some additional hires in human resources, technology and support services.
Raises will be reflected in September pay checks, and pay will also reflect higher wages dating back to July 1 — the start of the fiscal year.
The increases are just the latest among several the school board has approved since last fall, the most dramatic of which were approved in December. It’s also part of a years-long plan to annually raise wages and local salary supplements even more across the district.
“There is much more work to do,” Chief Business Officer David Neter told the school board Tuesday night.
Since December, starting pay for Wake County Public School System instructional assistants has nearly doubled from $11.80 a year ago and coincided with a drop in vacancies.
“From a personal level, it’s powerful to see that difference,” said Board Member Karen Carter, who was a special education instructional assistant before becoming a school board member at the end of 2020.
“I know there’s other reasons people come and go but I also know pay is important for a lot of our staff,” Carter said. Many instructional assistants — including her — and others work two to three jobs to make ends meet and contemplate whether they can afford to buy health insurance for their families, she said.
While raises have coincided with lower vacancy rates for some hourly workers, that hasn’t been the case for school bus drivers. Their pay increased from $15 per hour to $16.20 per hour last winter. Bus drivers will earn $17.20 this year, under the new pay schedule.
Under the school system’s new budget teachers and principals would receive 4% increases to their local salary supplements, instead of 2.5% increases the school board originally promised.
For teachers, that would be between $276.08 to $541.60 more next year.
Hourly employees would receive a $16 per hour minimum wage or a 4% increase, whichever is greater. That would be an increase for many employees, whom the county originally sought to give raises to $16 per hour or a 2.5% increase, whichever was greater.
Because lawmakers, with Gov. Roy Cooper’s signature, raised pay for school employees more than originally planned, the school system is able to cover more pay increases than it originally sought from Wake County commissioners.
Commissioners approved all but $6 million of the school board’s requested budget for this year — including a $50 million increase in county funding. That budget request already included pay increases.
But the school system will spend more than originally planned to cover raises for locally funded employees. Those raises will be higher than first planned to match their state-funded counterparts but won’t include any state funding.
As a result, the school board needed to find $9.2 million to cut from its budget plan to avoid a shortfall.
The board’s new budget accounts for the $9.2 million shortfall by increasing revenue projections related to federal grants by $3 million, moving $3 million in expected lapsed salaries for vacant positions, moving $3 million from the district’s fund balance, appropriating $180,000 in new state funds received for its new Wake Early College of Information and Biotechnologies, and cutting $59,000 from the district’s furniture budget.
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