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Trustees for the San Antonio Independent School District voted Monday evening to give a 4% raise to full-time hourly staff and a 3% raise to teachers and other salaried employees.
The raise will boost starting pay for full-time hourly staff to $17 an hour and the starting pay for teachers to $60,000. It also boosts the pay grades for head custodians and some instructional assistants, including assistants who work with special education students that need behavior support.
“Our head custodians have taken on an incredible amount of extra work for the HVAC and kind of everything else that's there. While we are region leading in head custodians based on size, we wanted to acknowledge the more complex work that our custodians are doing,” said James Harrell, SAISD’s chief of Human Capital Management, during a presentation to the board.
District officials previously recommended trustees approve a more modest compensation package that gave a 1% raise to hourly staff and a 2% raise to salaried employees. But trustees requested more options, and they chose the most generous option they were presented.
The original recommendation would have increased SAISD’s budget by $8.2 million. The package approved by trustees will cost the district an additional $14.7 million annually.
“While the District is facing a structural deficit, we remain committed to prioritizing staff compensation. Our employees are our most valuable resource, and like many across the country, they are feeling the impact of rising inflation,” said Superintendent Jaime Aquino in a statement. “This increase reflects the deep appreciation and respect we have for every SAISD employee.”
According to SAISD, the district has $51 million “structural deficit” that they are reducing through $17 million in cuts each year for the next three years. To help reduce costs next year, SAISD has eliminated dozens of positions in the academic department of the district’s central office.
