Cobb, Marietta staff see pay raises with 2020 budgets
110 FACTBOOK 2020
FACTBOX
Cobb County School District by the numbers
Student enrollment: 111,722
Number of schools: 112
Elementary: 67 (68 including
Kennesaw Charter School)
Middle: 25
High School: 17
Special schools: Adult Education
Center & Special Education Center
Per-pupil expenditures: $8,833
Number of teachers and
parapros: 8,642
Percentage of students who
qualify for free or
reduced-price lunch: 41.4%
Graduation rate: 85.2%
By Thomas Hartwell
thartwell@mdjonline.com
Both Cobb and Marietta educators and school staff saw pay raises
included with the approval of both districts’ fiscal 2020 budgets.
COBB
Teachers, bus drivers, custodians and other employees of Cobb
County schools received an 8 to 12.6% raise with the approval of its
2020 budget in May 2019.
The raise was the largest given by the district in at least the last 25
years, according to Superintendent Chris Ragsdale. The raises took
effect with the start of the 2020 fiscal year on July 1, 2019.
Every non-temporary staff member received the raise, and
substitute teachers also saw an 8% pay increase.
“One of our three priorities in this district is to make Cobb
the best place to teach, lead and learn. Teach is the first word in
that priority for a reason, because it’s my thought that if we invest
to make sure we have the best teachers and we can retain the
best teachers, the leading and learning will be outcomes of great
teachers,” Ragsdale said.
The raises account for $74 million of the district’s expected
$1.18 billion in expenses for fiscal 2020. Ragsdale said the
raises are in part thanks to the district’s low administrative
costs and to the General Assembly’s passage of $3,000 acrossthe
board raises for school staff in Georgia included in the
state’s budget.
Rosemary Vaughan, associate executive director for the
Kennesaw-based teacher advocacy group Educators First, said
the news is “unbelievable.”
“We are thrilled,” she said. “There have been past events
where the money has come down (from the state), and they
haven’t gotten it. They’ve gotten a Christmas bonus. So teachers
were getting a little discouraged, I think.”
Vaughan, whose daughter teaches in the Cobb County
School District, said the district is highly sought after by
teachers and families but had recently been lagging behind
other metro Atlanta districts in salaries. She said the newly
announced raises will “go a long way to helping retain the best
teachers.”
Teachers, she said, have a harder job than ever, and Cobb’s
raises serve as a recognition of that.
MARIETTA
Teachers and staff at Marietta City Schools saw an average
raise of 6.5%, effective July 1, 2019, after the school board’s
unanimous vote a month earlier to approve the district’s fiscal
2020 budget.
Superintendent Grant Rivera’s $108 million budget is
projected to be $4.1 million, or nearly 4%, more than last
year’s. The 6.5% across-the-board raises for virtually all school
district staff account for $5.5 million of the budget.
According to Erin Franklin, the district’s chief financial
officer, expenses could dip into reserves for about $3.1 million,
dropping the reserve balance from $17.2 million to about $14.1
million.
Three certified positions, likely those of teachers, would
also be dissolved under the proposed 2020 budget, saving the
district $286,319, Franklin said. She said those jobs will not
come as layoffs, as staff allotments fluctuate with enrollment
each year.
link
/www.midwayschool.org