The Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school board approved pay raises and stipends for employees Wednesday.
They include a 3% — $1,725 — increase for teachers, librarians and nurses, along with a 3% midpoint increase for all other full-time employees.
Those raises will cost the district $7.6 million, administration told the board.
Starting teachers at the district will make $55,425. Their overall compensation will be $66,869.
The board also approved robust one-time retention/recruitment stipends: $4,500 for teachers and librarians and $4,000 for all other employees.
Those stipends will be paid this month.
“I just want to say thank you to everybody,” Board President Ricardo Pedraza said. “I wish that we could give you more. I want to say thank you, because everything that I am is because of a teacher, somebody that took me in and taught me.”
The board also left the door open for a potential bump in pay for bus drivers.
Trustee Cynthia Gutierrez said she would support a $2 hourly increase to the starting pay for bus drivers. Accommodating that increase would cost $600,000, according to CFO Rebecca Gonzales, who said the district’s current $18 starting salary for drivers is competitive.
“We have seen some school districts that are exceeding the $18,” she said. “They are able to afford that because the employee pays a portion of their own health insurance. PSJA has been very adamant that they will cover the employee cost of health insurance 100%.”
Gutierrez said she’d be open to cutting other projects at the district to come up with the $600,000 for the increase.
Trustees on the whole seemed open to the proposition of the increase and may revisit it. Still, the conversation was not completely devoid of the rancor that frequently flavors the bitterly divided board’s meetings.
Trustee Jesse Zambrano asked Gutierrez if she’d crunched the numbers on the increase.
“I am about to ask, but thank you for pointing out and interrupting, as you usually do,” Gutierrez shot back.
