House Democrats on Tuesday filed a bill that would provide Texas teachers with a $15,000, across-the-board pay raise. Other school employees would get a 25%...
AUSTIN — House Democrats on Tuesday filed a bill that would provide Texas teachers with a $15,000, across-the-board pay raise.
While unlikely to pass in the GOP-controlled Legislature, the bill’s supporters said they hoped it would start what they called an urgent conversation about teacher pay. “We’re going to get to a juncture where we may need more than a simple majority to pass something and that’s when we’ll have something to say about that,” said Martinez Fischer, who leads 64 Democrats in a 150-member chamber. “So I think you can add this measure to the top of our list of things that we want to discuss before we take big votes like that.”
Such increases – of more than $20,000 a year – would occur mainly in rural school districts, Talarico said.Meza and Talarico noted that the bill would take the average teacher salary in Texas from about $56,000 now to nearly $74,000, vaulting it to the 7th highest state on teacher pay. Talarico estimated the Legislature has about $47 billion of “unused funds” it could spend this session. While precise costs of his bill haven’t been determined, it apparently would use as much as $20 billion or more over the two-year cycle that begins Sept. 1.Public education advocates warn of a potential exodus of teachers, many of whom report high levels of stress as they contend with pandemic-triggered learning loss, low pay and culture war attacks from Republicans.
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