GISD adopts ‘aggressive’ compensation plan for 2022-23

Gonzales ISD teachers will receive historic raises in the next fiscal year after the GISD Board of Trustees on Monday, April 11, unanimously adopted a new systemwide compensation plan.

The new plan — which will cost the district about $1.3 million to $1.4 million to implement — calls for teachers to receive an average salary increase of 7.4 percent or about $4,000. Actual amounts will range from $1,900 to $6,100, depending on which step of the pay scale they currently occupy.

Meanwhile, auxiliary and clerical staff will get three-percent raises, while administration and other professionals will get a two-percent pay increase.

The announcement of what Chief Financial Officer Amanda Smith called “an aggressive compensation plan” at Monday’s regular board meeting brought a big round of applause from other GISD employees present.

“What all of this boils down to is that we feel collectively the time is now to make a sizable investment into our people and into the district's compensation plan and our position in the market,” Smith said. “We've analyzed data exhaustingly, we've looked at historical events. And those factors have led us to this recommendation.”

Acting superintendent Dr. Kimberly Strozier said the district conducted a professional salary audit with assistance of the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB), which “noted areas of necessary pay and market adjustments.”

“Those recommendations were used to promote a strong competitive recruiting and retention compensation plan,” Strozier said. “I want to commend Haley Ratliff and Amanda Smith for their efforts in internalizing all of this lengthy data and responding with the best competitive compensation plan that I've seen to bring us current and make us aggressively competitive.”

Strozier said the compensation plan rollout is “timely” as normally such plans are not brought to the board for approval until June or July, but by unveiling the plan now, the district can make strides in recruitment of teachers and other personnel.

Ratliff, the district’s chief human resources officer, said a market analysis was performed to determine whether employees were being paid within an appropriate market range and whether pay structures for the district were adequate. The study included teachers, administrators, professionals, clerical, paraprofessionals and auxiliary staff.

Ratliff said teacher pay in Gonzales ISD was found to be six percent below average market rate for starting pay and as much as seven percent below average market rate when a teacher has 10 years experience. Gonzales was able to lower the pay deficit to one percent on average for teachers with 20 years or more experience.

“If you look at the pay raise we gave last year, we gave a two-percent raise,” Ratliff said. “When we looked at the market at the time and our peer groups, that’s what people were giving. When we looked again, after raises were given, everyone gave three percent, so it’s caused us to get further and further behind as our peer groups gave larger raises than we did.”

The average starting teacher salary for GISD’s peer districts is $47,300, compared to just $44,421 in Gonzales ISD.

“You can see that our biggest gaps are in the lower tiers being from zero to 15 years,” Ratliff said. “This is where we need to make the most ground to get our teachers competitive.”

Ratliff said TASB had recommended giving teachers a 2.1 to three percent raise, while giving administrative professionals a two to three percent bump.

“As administration, we did not feel like this was aggressive enough for us to be in a competitive market and to retain and attract teachers as we needed to,” Ratliff said. “It's time to give raises, based on the national teacher shortage and the huge need to move students through the post-pandemic decline.

“It's time to give raises. The administration recommends, to be competitive in the marketplace, we need to move the needle closer to the market median to recruit and retain teachers in GISD. We propose a more aggressive teacher pay scale than even TASB has recommended.”

Starting teacher salary will increase to $49,000 in GISD — up $5,000 above the current starting wage. Teachers in their fifth year will receive $51,250, up $4,500 above the current pay for that experience level, while teachers in their 10^th year will get $54,250, or $5,200 more than they currently receive.

Starting custodial pay will be $11.25 per hour (up $1.85), while instructional aides will start at $12.20 per hours (up $1.70) and bus drivers will start at $17.15 (up $1.15).

Auxiliary staff and clerical/paraprofessionals will get a three-percent general pay increase (GPI), while administrators and other professionals will receive a two-percent GPI.

The district will offer new stipends of $3,000 for math, ELA and science in grades 9-12; $2,000 for Life Skills; and $1,500 for special education self-contained and resource. The existing bilingual stipend will increase from $3,000 to $4,000, while the master’s degree stipend will jump from $500 to $1,200.

Smith warned trustees the plan will require some budgetary work, but said she is “very enthusiastic and very supportive of this plan.”

“I don't want to mislead you into thinking that we will be able to do this and I can guarantee you a balanced budget for next year, because that's not the case,” Smith said.

Smith said the district’s fund balances are “the healthiest they’ve been in years” and administration has already been preparing the budget to handle “an investment of this size.”

“We’ve already made cuts at central office to help pay for this compensation package,” Smith said. “We have only just begun our budgeting process and we’ve already made a significant number of reductions to pay for this. And we’ve just dipped our toe into the budget process.

“So I can guarantee you and I’m confident we’re going to be able to find more areas in this building specifically that will help us pay for this compensation package for our frontline workers.”

In a normal year, Smith said, the best scenario for the district would be to wait for the Texas Legislature to pony up additional funding, as they did through House Bill 3 a few years ago, to help pay for teacher pay raises.

“I don't personally believe that we can't wait that long,” Smith said. “I think we made good strides with House Bill 3 and even outside of House Bill 3. But then COVID happened and the world turned upside down and things have changed. And so what we're recommending is that we get ahead of that this time and we do something big here at Gonzales.”