Teachers, staff get 2 percent pay raise - #lakewoodnews

The Jefferson County Board of Education approved a raise of at least 2 percent for all teachers and staff as part of the $1 billion 2016-17 budget ratified at the June 2 meeting."What we did with the budget does reflect the priorities that we told the community we would implement when we were running," said board President Ron Mitchell, referring to increasing compensation for all staff and hiring more mental health workers. But "I am saddened by the fact there are so many things that I dreamed we would do and hoped we would do, but we couldn't do due to the funding restrictions placed on this budget."The approval comes after months of board discussions, community surveys and union negotiations. Along with the compensation increase, the board approved hiring full-time mental health employees, expanding clinic aide hours, increasing paraprofessional support and contract review administratorto work in the HR department on employee contracts."This is the very first time I've seen a budget come together so quickly," Superintendent Dan McMinimee said. "It is because of all of the pieces of the system working together to make this budget work."Moving forward, the board said it would like to see more dollars given to compensation, security and emergency management, technology and to schools for Student Based Budgeting (SBB), a budgeting model adopted by the board majority to give each school more flexibility on how to best use funding."Doing a budget is probably one of the most important things an elected body does and it's supposed to reflect the priorities we'd like to achieve," board member Brad Rupert said. "I feel pretty good that it actually does reflect the values we were elected to implement and, honestly, it reflects the values of our citizens and what we really need to do to educate our kids."The budget is available for public review on the district's website: www.jeffcopublicschools.org/finance

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