The Camden Fairview School Board unanimously approved a resolution increasing licensed staff's salaries in order to comply with recent state legislation targeting teacher pay at Tuesday night's meeting.
The LEARNS Act, passed in February, calls for a $50,000 starting salary for all certified teachers in Arkansas, as well as $2,000 raises for teachers already making $50,000 or more, and vouchers that will provide funds allowing children to attend private or home schools.
Camden Fairview Superintendent Johnny Embry told the board that the increase comes with pros and cons.
"It is the biggest pay increase the teachers have ever had and starting teachers are going to have a $50,000 salary and everybody's guaranteed at least $2,000," he said.
But Embry also said that with other schools increasing pay, the raises still leave a pay gap between south Arkansas and other areas.
He noted, "You're going to see some variance district to district, and I will say right now there's been some salary schedules released up north, and if you looked at some of the social media and the disparity on the top end, (it) is going to be big. In fact, I'm seeing some differences of $15- to $16,000, comparing us to schools up north. We've already had, always had, a pretty big variance on starting salary and LEARNS is going to exacerbate that on the top in the southwest schedule, and that's a concern for all the superintendents in the south worried about losing our more experienced staff members going up north."
Embry also stated that Pre-K was not accounted for in LEARNS legislation.
"A couple of things LEARNS didn't do: it did not pay for the raise for Pre-K teachers. We're going to do that. There's no way that we would shut down a Pre-K program. They'd be applying for jobs with other places. So we will be providing that free pay raise. And also it did not address classified staff, and we will have a proposal for that next month at the main board meeting."
In a PowerPoint presentation, Embry stated that $1,054,809 was funded by the state for salaries, with an additional $242,606 for benefits.
"Yes, they paid for what they said - getting to $50,000 and $2,000 dollars and they're going to give us about $1.3 million, but the cost of what we're proposing is $1.493 (million), almost $200,000 difference. So to meet the letter of the law for LEARNS, the district's going in the hole $195,000 and we have not addressed classified staff yet."
Embry also stated that no one currently employed by Camden Fairview would lose their jobs or have their contracts shortened and that the proposed salary schedule, which starts at $50,000 for first year teachers and increases up to $57,140 for educators with a Masters and 30 graduate hours, is a one year solution to allow more time to study the implications of LEARNS.