The rich keep getting richer, while rural Virginia barely hangs on. The Virginia Beach School Board approved the superintendent’s $828.8 million operating budget Tuesday night, which includes a 5% raise for employees.
The budget includes 5% raises for all staffers — 4.5% would come from a cost of living adjustment and a 0.5% step increase for employees below the top of the school system’s pay scale. The boost in compensation will cost the division roughly $28 million.
Virginia Beach School Board said it had to increase teacher pay in order to remain competitive in hiring, as Virginia routinely ranks as one of the lowest-paying states for teachers. The pandemic that has added stress and responsibilities for many teachers, made it “more important than ever” to improve pay, the board said.
Bob says
Same excuse was used in 1985 in New York
Now look at the inflated costs
Property taxes soared over the last 20 years because of over compensating school districts.
Paul Plante says
A school district up this way a while back hired a new superintendent with a contract.
Right after the new superintendent signed the contract, she came back and said she had just got a better offer and was laving, at which time the contract that she had just agreed to and signed was scrapped and she was given a new contract at a higher rate, and who cares, because it is the property owners who pay the freight and they have no real say in the matter.
The lawyers and real estate people like the high rates because they force old people off their land for failure to pay the school taxes, making it available to the developers and lawyers for a song.