Will new SC teachers get $38K or $40K? Competing plans face off as teachers push for more
Will new South Carolina teachers earn a minimum $38,000 or $40,000 starting next year? The answer depends on a brewing showdown between state representatives and senators, who now have passed competing plans for teacher raises, as the state faces a growing shortage of teachers.
Teachers in 25 South Carolina school districts would see their starting salary increased to $38,000 under a spending plan adopted by the state Senate.
The Senate this week passed a $12.6 billion spending plan, which includes a raise for state employees, and the higher state starting salary for teachers, along with a $1 billion tax rebate and a $1 billion tax cut.
The increase to $38,000 a year is up from $36,000 a year for a first-year teacher, but it falls short of the $40,000 starting pay approved last month by senators’ counterparts in the House. Teachers groups, along with the outgoing state superintendent of education, have called for the minimum pay to be raised to $40,000 across the state.
School districts already above those minimums would not have to raise teacher pay.
Senators pushed a lower state starting salary in order to give districts more flexibility in how their spend money. It also distributes the $227 million in additional education money differently.
Having the lower state mandated starting salary gives more flexibility in how school districts spend money including whether to pay above the minimum salaries, said state Sen. Sean Bennett, R-Dorchester.
“We don’t have a spending problem in South Carolina but a distribution problem in South Carolina,” Bennett said. “(The funding formula) provides money back to the districts without handcuffs, without mandates.”
But some, including at least one senator, worry that $38,000 minimum pay won’t be enough to help solve the record high shortage of teachers in South Carolina.
State Sen. Mike Fanning, D-Fairfield, who is a former teacher, tried to push for a $2,500 raise across the board for all teachers in the state in an effort to address a teacher shortage, but that idea was shot down by the chamber.
“We have teachers leaving like crazy, fewer kids going into education and what are we doing to solve that crisis?” Fanning said. “Our teachers were promised that we would pay them at the national average. We (added) $1,000 last year; we’re not doing it this year.”
Raises for other state employees
While the amount is still in limbo, the starting pay for teachers is certain to see a raise next year. So will all state employees, who are in line to see a 3% raise and have increases in health premiums covered by the state. Both the House and the Senate approved budget plans that pay for those expenses.
But the Senate scrapped the idea of a $1,500 bonus for each state employee as a reward for working through the pandemic.
However, the Senate spending plan does include a $1 billion tax rebate back to filers, something the House did not include.
First-year Senate Finance Chairman Harvey Peeler said returning the money directly to taxpayers will help generate more economic activity.
“Some of you are concerned that we’re returning too much. I want you all rest assured and rest at ease,” Peeler said. “If the stimulus taught us one thing, it taught us that it stimulates the economy and boomerangs back to the general fund.”
Ultimately, whether to include a rebate in the official state budget will have to reconciled in during a conference committee between representatives and senators expected to begin next month.
“We believe that the money would be better spent on roads and it would be on refunding to the citizens,” said House Speaker-elect Murrell Smith, who will continue to serve as Ways and Means chairman until May 12. “Certainly, I recognize the importance and this is the citizens’, the taxpayers’ money, but if I recall when we did a few years ago, I I heard a lot from our constituents that they would rather have their roads fixed than they would have money refunded to them, and I’m still hearing that now.”
This story was originally published April 29, 2022 at 2:30 PM.
