Raises coming soon for Wake County school employees
After months of delays, Wake County school employees will finally get long awaited pay raises.
The Wake County Board of Education on Tuesday approved new pay tables for employees, combining the new state budget with the county’s already-planned raises.
The vote will result in pay increases well above what the school board approved this spring, when state lawmakers hadn't passed a budget and therefore hadn't approved any employee raises.
Tuesday's vote also included a motion for staff to look into paying more employees twice per month, instead of just once per month. State-funded employees are typically paid once per month.
Employees are expected receive their first paycheck with raises in their November paycheck, paid at the end of the month, spokeswoman Sara Clark said. No later than the December paycheck, they'll receive a paycheck that includes back pay — what they would have earned had they been given raises at the start of the fiscal year July 1.
Starting pay for bus drivers — the most critically short employees in the school system — will be $18.55 per hour, up from $17 per hour, a 9.1% increase. Starting pay for a bus driver on a 10-month contract will be $32,153.34. More than a third of bus driver positions in the county are unfilled.
Starting annual pay for Wake County teachers will be $46,057.60, an increase of 5.4%.
That’s boosted in part by state lawmakers raising starting pay more significantly, while overall compressing the salary schedule with smaller raises for the most experienced teachers.
A 30-year teacher in Wake County, per the new tables, will earn $68,653.90, up 2.7%.
Minimum wage for school employees will raise to $17 per hour from $16 per hour. That's above just two years ago, when minimum wage in the school system for some employees was just $11.80 per hour.
Job fill rates have improved since then for instructional assistants, who were among those paid just $11.80 per hour starting out.
The new salary schedules can be found in the board's finance committee agenda.
While the school board had approved locally funded raises this spring, officials have waited to pay any of the increases because they didn’t know what their funding would end up being from the state. State lawmakers passed a budget in September, nearly three months after the fiscal year had already begun. The budget was enacted this month.
Wake County commissioners approved a $50 million increase for the school system in June, largely to pay for increases in employee pay. That’s about $5 million less than what the school board had asked for from the county.
