At a special meeting on March 5, the Camp Verde Unified School District Governing Board voted to give teachers and certified staff a raise of 6 percent.
At a following meeting on March 12, the board voted to raise the salaries of administrative staff by the same amount, along with giving principals a raise of 4 percent. The estimated cost of the raises is $433,600.
“It helps them keep up with the cost of living,” CVUSD Administrator-in-Charge Danny Howe said. “I’m not going to go out and say it puts them up there with doctors and lawyers and things like that, but we’ve got to at least keep up with the cost of living.”
The motion passed with language stating that the raises will only go into effect if funding promised by Gov. Doug Ducey last year is allocated by the Arizona State Legislature. In 2018, in response to statewide teacher strikes as part of the RedForEd movement, Ducey put forward a plan for 20 percent teacher raises by the year 2020 and, while the governor has said that will include a 5 percent raise in the coming school year, the legislature has not yet approved that funding.
The board has previously voted down a potential raise of 5 percent at a Feb. 12 meeting after board members Helen Freeman and Bob Simbric wanted to hear additional options before making a decision. At the March 5 meeting, the board discussed three potential raise options: A 5 percent raise, costing the district $360,000, the 6 percent raise, which eventually passed, or a 7.5 percent raise costing the district $512,000.
While most of the board supported the middle option of 6 percent, board member Carol German objected, arguing the school should give a higher raise to its teachers to make up for the wage increase last year being lower than the 10 percent that most districts got. The CVUSD administration decided to spread the state funding to grant-funded teachers in the district who were not included in the state plan, bringing the level of raises down.
“I wanted them to up it another 1.5 percent,” German said. “I wanted them to go to 7.5 percent because last year all the teachers got was 7.5 and that would at least bring them up to the 15 percent where they should be this next year. Because the governor said 10 percent the first year, 5 percent the next year.”
“We can’t spread ourselves too thin,” Howe said in response to German’s desire for higher raises. “With the current-year funding, you’re rolling the dice in terms of what money you’re going to have. Carol firmly believes teachers are underpaid. That’s her stance and she made that very clear.”
In German’s view, teachers in Arizona are still not paid enough for their jobs, especially considering the professional degrees that many have. She said she voted against the measure to make that stance clear. The measure passed 4-1.
Under the measure passed by the board, 1.65 percent raises will be administered by raising each teacher up one step in the district’s salary schedule, while the remaining 4.35 percent will be an across-the-board raise on all levels of the salary schedule.
