Senate committee OKs plan to increase Arkansas teacher salaries by $4,000 annually

FILE — The state Capitol is shown in this undated file photo.
FILE — The state Capitol is shown in this undated file photo.


The Senate Education Committee approved a plan Tuesday to increase annual teacher salaries by $4,000, a move that could be a blueprint for lawmakers in the next session in January.

The recommendations from the committee are an end to a biennial process where lawmakers review the state public education system and make recommendations to the governor. Though this time lawmakers from the House and Senate education committees passed different plans, showing the two chambers are out of sync despite both being controlled by GOP supermajorities.

In addition to an across-the-board $4,000 raise, both House and Senate proposals call for increasing the annual minimum starting salary from $36,000 to $40,000. But in contrast, the House proposal calls for the salary increases to begin in the fiscal year 2023, while the Senate plans recommended the state wait until the next fiscal year, which will begin July 1, 2023.

"That's just kind of the nature of the lawmaking process," state Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, said of the different proposals. "These are only recommendations; they could absolutely change in January."

The proposals are part of statutory required recommendations that lawmakers make after reviewing a study put together by state education officials and outside consultants. Pay raises for teachers have become a top issue for many as school districts around the state struggle to retain and recruit educators.

The Senate's plan also calls for adding an updated definition for college and career readiness, increasing the number of computer science and special education teachers, and creating a task force to study education funding.

At the centerpiece of both the House and Senate proposals is the state's education funding formula, also known as the matrix. The matrix outlines a funding plan for a school district with 500 students, but local school officials have wide discretion in how they can spend state funding and have final say over salaries.

"The superintendents and schools boards have to make those adjustments based on what their pay schedule looks like," Irvin said.

Like the House proposal, the Senate plan calls for tweaking the education funding formula to spend more dollars on salaries, staff and benefits for school districts. There is also supplemental funding for school districts that can be earmarked for a specific purpose such as salaries.

The Senate proposal calls for increasing funding for the average annual teacher salary from $57,208 to $61,208 and $62,530 in the fiscal year 2025. Both plans also call for raising a supplemental fund for teacher salaries from $52 million to $60 million.

Since a report of a $1.6 billion budget surplus in June teachers and a bipartisan group of politicians have called for using some of those funds for teacher salaries. In August, Gov. Asa Hutchinson called a special session to accelerate a $500 million tax cut after news of the budget surplus.

Hutchinson, along with Democrats and some Republicans, also called for using the budget surplus to increase teacher salaries but the effort failed during the special session.

The plan also calls for merit pay increases, which would mean school districts could pay more for teachers who specialize in a needed subject such as physics or incentivize teachers to stay in the classroom rather than move into higher-paying administrative jobs.

One of the few Democrats on the committee, Sen. Linda Chesterfield of Little Rock, criticized the plan for not matching salaries in neighboring states such as Mississippi.

"We're talking about saying to our teachers, yeah, we want to be adequate," Chesterfield said. "There is nothing adequate about being paid less than your counterparts in surrounding states."


Upcoming Events