CHARLESTON — Pay raise bills for West Virginia educators passed their first committee hurdle with a more ambitious proposal than what had been publicly discussed up to now, but there’s still much more to go.
The House Education Committee passed two bills providing pay raises for teachers and school service personnel during a Wednesday afternoon meeting.
House Bill 4767 would provide pay raises for teachers, saying the change is to “bring them into parity with salaries offered in surrounding states.”
The pay raise bill for teachers raises the base pay, with starting pay at a bachelor’s degree level at $44,000, and then adjusts for each year of service. The bill has a formula to meet that goal of bringing teacher salaries in line with surrounding states, committee leaders said, so that’s a twist on the average 5% pay raises discussed up until now by the governor and others.
“The goal was to say let’s get us competitive with our neighboring states, try to take away the argument of ‘We’re not being paid competitively and our people are leaving us,’” Education Committee Chair Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, said following the meeting.
“We want to get them to the point where they’re comfortable, competitive, get people to stay here in the state so we can fill our slots and get our students educated. That was the goal. But we also want to give them the comfortable lifestyle. We’d like to give them more. However, there’s a finite amount.”
House Bill 4202 raises salaries for school service personnel. It would provide a raise of $670 a month for those workers. Most of the text of each bill shows changes to pay scales.
Each bill was also referred to the House Finance Committee. Fiscal estimates suggest the teacher raise bill could total $116 million. The total between the two bills is estimated to be $210 million to $220 million.
“The governor gave us his budget. He told us what the revenue expectation is. My opinion is, it’s up to the Legislature to decide how we want to spend it,” said Ellington, who said he has started discussions with House Finance Chair Vernon Criss.
Ellington continued by acknowledging, “Finance is going to look at the whole budget. They’ve got to look at the whole big picture. We’re trying to look from the standpoint of education, what things do we need to do to get us to be competitive nationwide and to do the best for our students and our citizens.”
Following the education committee meeting, Fred Albert, president of American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia said he was encouraged.
“We’re very pleased, of course,” Albert said. “And this is a different bill from what the governor had proposed. This would create a bill that would pay our teachers and our service personnel more. It’s much needed because we all know we’re facing shortages in both our professional staff and our support staff, and something needs to be done.
“So, this is welcome news, we appreciate it, and we’re hoping that it will continue to move through the Legislature in a positive way.”
Pay is a top concern
Gov. Jim Justice in his State of the State address called for average 5% pay raises for state employees at a cost to the state of $123 million. Justice said the pay raise is meant to cover increased costs under the Public Employees Insurance Agency and more.
West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee said compensation has fallen behind for state educators and that pay is a top concern.
“Pay is part of it. The PEIA, the health benefit — and last year’s raise, while everybody says ‘Well you got four in five years,’ last year’s raise was eaten up with the 24.2% increase in PEIA premiums,” Lee said Wednesday on MetroNews’ “Talkline.”
“We’re facing another 10.5% premium increase this year. If you had to pay the spouse penalty, you actually lost money from last year to this year.”
In the Senate
The Senate is assessing how the state’s own finances will hold up with the raise proposal.
Last week, Senate Finance Chair Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, said that $123 million expense would be a tight squeeze.
Tarr noted that officials are already assessing the financial effects of the 21.25% personal income tax cut signed into law last year. And he sized up coming expenses such as the continuing rollout of the Third Grade Success Act, which puts additional aides in early-grade classrooms, an additional expense of
$33 million each year of the expansion.
Tarr said previously that he supports state employees getting paid as much the state can possibly afford relative to what their market is. He cautioned, though, that the state needs to hold the line to not grow spending beyond 3% while there are still tax cuts moving into place.
Senate Education Chair Amy Nichole Grady, speaking Wednesday on “Talkline,” said the majority caucus in the Senate has not yet reached a consensus on whether the proposed pay raises are affordable for the state.
