Seguin ISD board OKs raises for staff

Felicia Frazar The Seguin Gazette

Seguin ISD staff will see a bump in pay as the district attempts to keep employees from leaving for other districts or career opportunities.

Much like the rest of the state, Seguin ISD is seeing teachers opting to take jobs closer to home or even out of education. In an effort to reduce the amount of staffing changes, the board voted unanimously on Tuesday to give teachers, clerical, maintenance, custodial and transportation a 4% raise, campus administration and other professionals a 3.5% and child nutrition staff a $1.50 an hour raise.

“I just want to thank you for your decision to provide the salary increase to our employees,” Seguin ISD Superintendent Matthew Gutierrez told the board. “I appreciate your investment in our employees.”

The increase will give first year teachers a starting pay scale of $57,000. It also offers a $500 Welcome Back Stipend to teachers who return, and a $500 stipend for referring an educator friend.

With more pressure put on educators with changes to STAAR testing and the state’s accountability system, Gutierrez said he is proud of the work his staff does on a daily basis, and is pleased the board agreed.

“I’m just really proud of our district for investing in our teachers to make the salaries as competitive as they could possibly be,” he said.

Gutierrez had hoped the increases would be higher with the assistance from the Texas Legislature.

“We were really optimistic that there was going to be additional funding coming into the school district, especially because the governor had tapped the commissioner with developing a teacher vacancy task force to spend a number of months to spend with a team of superintendents and teachers to really identify why our teachers are leaving the field,” he said. “They came up with several recommendations, but the one primary was teacher compensation and health care benefits.”

But with school funding tied to other bills, it forces districts to find other ways to retain educators, Gutierrez said.

“Unfortunately, we did not see anything happen in Austin and school funding is being held hostage until school vouchers pass,” he said. “School districts had to figure out how we were going to remain competitive. We’re very fortunate that we have an amazing business office and we have a very astute board who all pay very close attention to our finances and we budget very conservatively every single year.”

The exodus of teachers are for varying reasons, including jobs closer to home and occupations outside of education.

“We knew we needed to take drastic action and really decide what our budget priorities are going to be,” Gutierrez said. “Ultimately, we decided to take a recommendation of 4% to remain competitive in all areas whether it is custodial, child nutrition, administrative, but particularly our teaching staff. What this is going to do, is it is going to get us to a place where especially our starting salaries are going to be very competitive to our comparison districts, as well as making sure our teachers with more experience continue to also be competitive as well.”

With more housing options coming to the area and more teachers moving in, Gutierrez is hopeful it will help keep them from seeking out different job alternatives.

“Down the road that is going to help us as developers continue to invest in housing in our community,” he said. “We’re going to start seeing more teachers moving into our community. But still, we have to focus on creating a climate where our teachers feel supported where they do want to stay and we’re going to continue to focus on that.”

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