Denton ISD puts 2% to 4% raises for teachers, staff on the table

Jason Rainey, Denton ISD’s executive director of professional personnel, said his division is crunching the numbers for three models of salary increases for the midpoint of the district’s salary range. Using a 2% salary increase, starting teachers would increase to $59,000. A 3% increase would make the starting teacher salary $59,500, and the 4% model would increase starting teacher pay to $60,200.

District teachers and professionals are paid according to a schedule that uses years of experience as the chief salary metric.

“Our hiring schedule goes from zero to 25 years,” Rainey said. “So if you’re a teacher with more than 25 years, you are capped at 25 years. So if it’s 25 years, or 30 or 35, and you’re new to the district — you’re going be at the same salary, regardless of your years of experience.”

Rainey said the district has to determine market competition in preparing compensation plans. He looked to school districts across the Dallas-Fort Worth area that look similar to Denton ISD in student enrollment and the number of full-time staffers, most of whom are teachers, librarians and nurses. But the district is also looking to recommend salary increases to other employees — bus drivers, for example.

Rainey identified 15 school districts that are similar to Denton ISD, and added Prosper ISD to the list of market peers last year. Market peers also represent the school district’s competition when it comes to hiring.

Rainey said that 65% of teachers and librarians in Denton ISD are hired with between zero and 10 years of experience.

This school year, the bulk of Denton ISD newly hired teachers — 37% — were in their first year of teaching. Another 28% have been teaching for one to five years. The district hired fewer experienced teachers this year — 18% had been teaching six to 10 years, 7% taught 11 to 15 years, and just 10% of hires this year joined Denton ISD with 16 or more years of experience.

The compensation models also include raises for nonexempt employees, a category that includes bus drivers, child nutrition workers, custodians, maintenance workers, groundskeepers, crossing guards, clerical staff and instructional aides. A look at the compensation plan highlights how pressed hourly workers can be for affordable housing and health care.

“Last year we pushed and we made significant increases to our nonexempt employees,” Rainey said. “We moved all of our hourly employees up to $15 an hour. That upped some of the pay grades that were $11 or $12 an hour, pushing it up almost $3 an hour. Where we are we’re making some recommendations now is for our bus drivers.”

Denton ISD bus drivers currently make just over $21 per hour, Rainey said.

“We are making a recommendation in each of these models to get our bus drivers to $23 an hour,” he said. “So when you look at transportation on each model, you’re not going to see a huge difference between those because we’re making such a push to get everyone above the $23 an hour mark.”

Compensation changes must be approved by the school board. District officials have been tracking several bills that could bring relief to school districts — especially fast-growing ones like Denton ISD — especially if the state Legislature approves teacher salary increases and plumps up allotments the state distributes to public schools.