The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education is getting ready to ask Orange County for an additional $4.465 million to help with increases in teacher salaries.
Superintendent Tom Forcella said these increases were necessary to help recruiting new teachers and retaining current ones.
“As we are now in a process of recruitment and going to these fairs where the candidates are, it would really help if we could share with them that we have a commitment to increasing our local supplement,” he said.
Teacher’s salaries are determined two ways. First they are given a base salary set by the state, which the district expects to rise by five percent this year. That increase is estimated to total around $2.1 million.
Teachers also receive a supplement decided by individual districts. CHCCS is looking to increase its supplement for new teachers from 12 percent to 16 percent to keep up with an increase in Wake County last year. That increase is expected to total around $1.8 million.
Board chairman James Barrett said they need to be clear with the county as to why they need this funding.
“They need to know, here’s what the state is ‘doing’ to us,” he said. “Not because of cuts, because those may still come, but because of the salary increases from the state, that has an impact on what (Orange County) has to provide. And then there’s an additional impact from the match Wake effort.”
The board will meet again April 7 to approve the supplement increase.
Once approved, the district will have to pay for the increase, whether or not the county commissioners give the funding the district is asking for.
“The 4.4 million, almost all of it will be non-discretionary to us and so therefore anything less than that, we will have to make reductions in people to match whatever we don’t get out of that 4.4 million,” Barrett said.
But even if the commissioners give the district all the money they’re asking for, they could still be at the mercy of the state increases.
The district expects a five percent increase in salaries, but assistant superintendent Todd LoFrese said state could bump the increase to seven or eight percent.
“If that is what occurred we would need to come back to the board with a way to balance our budget,” he said. “Because that would put us, assuming we got our entire request from the county commissioners, that would put us all of the sudden $1 million behind.”
The district will present its proposed budget to the commissioners April 26.
