Austin ISD approves 'meaningful' pay raise for teachers, staff

AUSTIN, Texas - The Austin Independent School District has approved a pay raise for all of its teachers and staff.

"The agreement includes, increase teacher, counselor, librarian, instructional coaches and special ed related services by 7%," says Ken Zarafis, president of Education Austin.

Hourly employees will also see a $4 an hour pay increase.

"Which brings the minimum wage up to $20 an hour and increases everybody else's pay by $4 as well. And it is just a game changer," says Zarafis.

During the April school board meeting, Education Austin rallied in front of the school board as part of their "We Know Our Worth" campaign. Educators were demanding a 12 percent increase.

During that meeting, Education Austin and AISD came to an agreement of a 7 percent increase for certified teachers and a $4 an hour increase for hourly employees.

"We know that it's huge, $12 an hour, but we know that we had to push hard to get to a landing point that would impact people's lives positively so that we got to 7% of the 12% is a huge win," says Zarafis.

Also, special education and bilingual stipends will increase to $7,000.

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AISD says it will also provide above-market adjustments, increasing base salary by 20 percent for LSSPs and educational diagnosticians.

Administrative Professional pay scale will also go up 5 percent of midpoint for pay grades AP1-12 and 3 percent of midpoint for pay grades AP13-16.

The last time AISD saw a significant pay raise like this was back in 2019.

"But it wasn't all of them. And so it wasn't as full as this one. And we've never had a pay raise like this for classified employees, hourly employees of $4 an hour," says Zarafis.

Education Austin says this is a great way to attract more educators to AISD.