After Gov. Brian Kemp proposed another $2,000 raise for Georgia’s public school teachers Thursday morning, Bulloch County Schools Superintendent Charles Wilson revealed plans that evening for a $2,500 raise in local supplement for teachers and other certified educators and a $3-an-hour raise for non-certified school employees.

In his report during the Bulloch County Board of Education’s 2023 organizational meeting Thursday evening, Wilson called the governor’s announcement “great news” and then briefly described the local proposal.

“Bulloch County is top-notch,” Wilson recapped after the meeting. “If you want to remain top-notch, you have to behave top-notch, and we want to be competitive. Bulloch County is a place where people should be proud to work, and we should treat people that way. That’s what our plan is.”

His remarks had been intended to apprise the elected board members – including two who had just been sworn in for the first time – of his intentions for the school system’s fiscal year 2024 budget, which has yet to be fleshed out and will not take effect until July 1. No vote was taken.

But board members afterward individually expressed support to Wilson for making the local raises retroactive to Jan. 1, 2023 in the current budget.

“With that said, we are going to do so,” Wilson stated in an email Friday morning to Bulloch County Schools employees. “That means that you will receive the benefit of this increase for the remaining six months of this fiscal year.”

Kemp, during his second-term inaugural speech around 10 a.m. Thursday, had announced that his proposed state budget would contain a $2,000 raise in annual salary for all state employees, as well as teachers, and in effect other certified educators employed by local school systems. Through its funding formulas to the schools, the state supplies the largest portion of the pay of counselors, media specialists and many administrators, as well as teachers.

To attract and keep personnel in competition with other districts, school systems offer local supplements atop the state base pay. Meanwhile, the pay of non-certificated personnel, such as cafeteria cooks and servers, school bus drivers and custodial and maintenance workers, is considered a local responsibility and not included in state-funded raises.

Previous raises

The local plan Wilson announce is intended to cover both categories of employees.

For the school district’s non-certificated employees, the $3 raise in hourly pay will follow a $2 raise which was also proposed by Wilson and Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Troy Brown a year ago and approved by the board with the current fiscal year’s budget.

For teachers, the $2,000 state raise and $2,500 local raise obviously amount  to a $4,500 boost in annual pre-tax pay. This follows a $2,000 state pay raise Kemp and the Georgia General Assembly delivered for teachers last year, which combined with an earlier $3,000 boost to fulfill Kemp’s promise of a $5,000 teacher raise during his first four-year term.

The Bulloch County Schools did not add a dollar-amount local raise for teachers to the state raise last year. But the final version of the current, fiscal 2023 budget approved by the board last spring actually added an amount equal to 3% of base pay for all the district’s employees, beyond the $2 local noncertified employee raise and $2,000 state certified educator raise.

The district’s pay charts are complicated. But for a teacher with less than two full years of service and the most basic certification, the current base pay is $37,217, and the Bulloch County supplement is $4,050, for a total of $41,267. So, the currently promised state and local raises appear set to boost that to $45,767.

College-graduate paraprofessionals in regular classrooms, currently getting $14.66 an hour, should see that rise to $17.66.

Annual cost: $5.2M

A full year of the new local raises is projected to cost $5.2 million in the fiscal 2024 budget that will open July 1, so the half-year, retroactive addition to the 2023 budget will be about $2.6 million, Brown said Friday.

But the raises are being funded as the Bulloch County Schools’ general fund is flush with cash after being allotted more than $36 million special federal funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act of 2020 and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The current year’s general fund budget originally forecast $107 million in spending but $6.3 million more than that in revenue, with the fund balance rising to a record $53 million.

Brown and Wilson have proposed spending down of that balance, with amounts committed to the federally allowed purposes, in terms of five-year budgeting.

“With our fund balance and projected future revenues, this (the raises) will work right into our long-range plan,” Wilson said. “What we’ll be doing is utilizing the resources we have for competitively attracting people as well as leveraging the equity we have with  future resources.  This is something we believe will work and be easily sustainable.”

New chair’s view

Glenn Womack, new in the role of Board of Education chair, confirmed Friday that he and other board members wanted to make the raises apply immediately.

“Our fiscal year happens in July, but we wanted to go ahead and make it retroactive because, you know, people are hurting.  Just go to the grocery store and see what things cost,” Womack said. “I just want out educational family to be fairly compensated.”

Wilson and Brown provided information that showed the raises were sustainable, he said.

“Buildings and all are great, but your core asset is people,” Womack added. “So, I was very excited that we came out of the COVID era not too financially strained … and hey, if we’ve got the money, let’s give it to our educational family.”

One of eight board members, Womack was elected by voters in District 1 two years ago to a four-year term. He was unanimously chosen by the members Thursday night to chair the board through 2023.

Elizabeth Williams, the newly-elected member from District 2, was unanimously chosen as vice chair. Elected by their districts last May, she and new District 4 member Donna Clifton were sworn-in at the beginning of the meeting.

Because the year is already underway, the raise amounts for January will be added to school employees’ February paychecks, Wilson told them in his email.