The White County Board of Education reviewed an updated fiscal year 2027 pay scale designed to correct step discrepancies and meet the state mandate for teacher base salaries.
Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger presented the revised salary framework that covers credentialed, non-credentialed and nutrition program employees. He said the adjustments ensure that salary increases remain consistent from year-to-year rather than fluctuating randomly between steps.
“So we saw a lot of variance in some of these scales that we didn’t catch before,” Dronebarger said. “So we’ve gone back and just cleaned that up so that those steps are uniform.”
The district plans to add $1,625 to all certified positions in the upcoming budget to reach the $50,000 base salary required by the governor. Dronebarger said the uniform step increases will now be set at $720 for certified positions. The updated framework also includes a two percent raise across all staff positions.
“For example, I think in the certified scale, there were step raises of you would get say $350 for two or three years in a row and then you would get a thousand and then the next year it would be 650,” Dronebarger said. “And it was just things like that that we found that were kind of all over the place and it didn’t make sense that, you know, somebody was getting maybe a thousand dollar raise in year four and then a year 10 teacher was getting 350 that year.”
The district is also transitioning away from tying salary steps directly to years of service. This change allows administrators to negotiate starting steps based on a new hire’s prior experience in other counties or systems.
“We could say you had three years, you’d maybe be on three years, but you have vast experience, we might be able to get you to four or five as a negotiating tool to get some people in,” Dronebarger said. “So we’re moving away, as most people have, from years to steps.”
The pay scales for both classified staff and supervisory roles cap at 20 steps because employees typically do not remain in those specific positions for longer durations. The board chair said the corrections ensure no employees are penalized while balancing the formulas going forward.
“If the board, you know, chose to give raises or, you know, if we had extra million dollars floating in here that we wanted to add to the pay scales, it makes it very easy to add it uniform across the board and it makes sense and it’s fair across the board to all of our employees,” Dronebarger said.
Board members advanced a motion to approve the fiscal year 2027 pay scale for the district.