A big part of the 2024 legislative session was on public education.

Senator for District 12 Amy Sinclair says that the Area Education Agency, State Supplemental Aid and teacher’s pay portions were the biggest part of the main bill. She mentions one of the lengthy discussions on teacher pay with lawmakers was about handling salaries that are in between the new starting salary at $47,500 and those teachers that have at least 12 years of experience being paid $60,000 going into next school year. Sinclair outlines the process that should be taken for these situations.

“The Department of Revenue is compiling the numbers from the schools’ BEDS (Basic Educational Data Survey) reports, so that they know what teachers are currently being made, and they’re setting up a tiered schedule for getting those dollars out to schools. So there are funding pieces going out to schools for small, medium and large schools, and then there’s a further review of what the salaries actually are, so that if a small school needs more than the teacher salary supplement, that would go to a small school in order to meet the requirements.”

Sinclair explains that currently, it’s looking like there will be another $22 million to be included to help with salary compactions across the state. She adds that there was also $14 million appropriated to increase pay for teacher support staff, such as paraeducators, who work with some of the students who are in need of the most help.