Why was a salary step increase given to teachers?
On June 21, 2010, Keller ISD's Board of Trustees voted to provide those employees on a salary schedule a step increase. This came a week prior to a ruling from the Texas Attorney General regarding the effect House Bill 3646 has on salaries of teachers and other specific school district employees during the 2010-11 school year.
In his ruling on June 29, the AG held that school districts are bound under HB 3646 (the state pay-raise law passed last year) to base local salaries on whatever their 2008-09 salary schedule would provide at each step. The AG makes clear that the legislation requires that the state pay raise be added on top of whatever a teacher would have received each of the years in question from the district. To prevent districts from lowering pay scales, districts are held to the terms of their 2008-09 salary schedule. With this information, we now know that the Board's vote on June 21, put into action what they would have had to do regarding salaries, per the AG decision.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram ran an article on this issue on June 29. That article cites Joy Baskin, director of legal services at the Texas Association for School Boards, for these ideas: "Most school districts have implemented or made budget plans to cover the step increases... While the state provided funding for the mandatory pay raises in the bill, legislators did not include money for the incremental raises based on experience... From a funding perspective, this was underfunded."
As Ms. Baskin points out, this was an unfunded mandate.