CONWAY -- Teachers and other employees of the Conway School District will not get across-the-board raises for the coming school year, the superintendent said Thursday.
Step raises, which are based on experience and training levels, will continue as usual, Superintendent Greg Murry said.
A smaller increase than usual in property-tax revenue combined with increased debt payments in the next fiscal year are responsible for the lack of across-the-board raises, Murry said.
"Our local property tax proceeds will not grow to the degree that they need to for" the coming year, he said. "Our assessed value for the [2016-17] school year is only going to produce 298,000 additional dollars for our budget. By comparison, our average over the last five years was [an additional] $1.3 million."
"There's been a little bit of a slowdown in construction over the last several years, and it's catching up" Murry noted.
The good news, he said, is that "you can look around Conway and see" plenty of construction underway now. "So, I think this is not a trend, just a dip for us."'
Still, Murry said, it's too soon to speculate on raises for the 2017-18 school year.
In 2010, Conway voters approved a 1.9-mill increase aimed at financing the construction of high school facilities and an additional elementary school for the rapidly growing district.
To prevent the millage increase from being any higher, Murry said, the school district scheduled debt repayment on the facilities to increase annually for a time, since school officials expected property-tax revenue to increase annually. Those payments are to level off in a couple of years, he said.
The tax revenue this time didn't increase enough for the district to pay that extra debt and still give across-the-board raises, he explained.
As a result, employees on salary schedules who in the past got increases of about 1 percent or 2 percent won't get a raise this time, he said.
The district has 1,187 employees, including teachers. Starting pay for a typical teacher with a bachelor's degree and no experience is $39,878 annually, Murry said.
Murry said he received "seven, eight or nine" emails from employees who thanked him for taking care of the district after they learned of the raise situation. He said he deleted those emails and no longer has them.
While Murry said he received no negative emails, he said, "I am absolutely certain not everyone is happy with the decision. ... I understand that."
Faulkner County tax collector Steve Simon was out of the office and unavailable for comment Thursday, his office said. Conway Mayor Tab Townsell did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.
State Desk on 04/22/2016