With record surplus, Beshear aims again at raising pay for teachers, state workers
With a record $1.1 billion surplus in the state budget, Gov. Andy Beshear is ready and willing to again roll out his plans to raise salaries for Kentucky public school personnel and state employees.
Not so fast, says state Senate budget chairman Chris McDaniel, R-Taylor Mill. “A lot of different people have a lot of different priorities about what to do with the budget surplus,” he said.
McDaniel said he is focusing on school funding and pensions for education and noted that individual school boards “take care of salaries.”
For state workers, he said, “We will look at all the needs, but the bottom line is the legislature is not going to be in a rush to spend the surplus.”
Beshear takes credit for the surplus, while Republicans say it came about because of policies of the GOP-led legislature.
The Democratic governor has tried in the first two budget proposals he presented to the Republican-led legislature to fulfill a campaign promise — increase the salaries of school personnel and state workers. But he has been turned down.
The last raise for school personnel and state workers was in 2016. The median salary for a state government employee in Kentucky is $32,800, according to the Kentucky Association of State Employees. Payscale.com says the average base salary for a Kentucky state worker is about $43,000 a year.
The average salary for a public school teacher in the state in the 2020-2021 school year was $54,384, said David Patterson, spokesman for the Kentucky Education Association. That ranked Kentucky 36th in the nation for teacher pay, he said.
The KEA said Kentucky had 42,479 public school teachers in the 2019-2020 school year.
The National Education Association estimated the average national classroom teacher salary for the past school year was $65,090. But it said that only increased by 0.9 percent over the last decade when adjusted for inflation.
Beshear thinks the budget surplus will translate to higher pay for school personnel and state employees.
On July 9, Beshear said Kentucky’s “economy is on fire” as he reported the record budget surplus. He said there was significant growth revenue in all three of the state’s largest tax areas — individual income, sales, and business tax receipts. They account for 80 percent of total General Fund receipts, which pays for most state programs, especially education and human resources.
The extra money was from state revenue receipts and not federal dollars for COVID-19 relief, as some people have erroneously reported on social media.
In January, Beshear will present to state lawmakers his spending plan for the next two years.
“The governor has recommended a raise for educators and state employees in each of his proposed budgets and will do so again,” Beshear spokeswoman Crystal Staley said this week. “While the General Assembly has refused to provide the increases in the past, with this more than $1 billion surplus, there should be no argument we can afford it.”
The pay raise issue in the 2022 legislature will come a year before Beshear faces re-election for another four-year term.
Beshear’s first two-year proposed budget in 2020 included his promised $2,000 raise for all full-time public school teachers and a 1 percent salary increase each year for state workers. The pay raises were estimated to cost $106.5 million in the first fiscal year and $114.4 million in the second year, said Staley.
Anxious for a pay raise
Organizations representing state workers and school personnel are excited about possible raises from the budget surplus.
“We don’t know if we will get it but we are lobbying for it, anxious for it,” said David Smith, executive director of the Kentucky Association of State Employees. “We hope the legislature uses the budget surplus appropriately and provide raises. We haven’t had one in six years.”
Smith points to the “dwindling” number of state workers. A recent presentation by Personnel Secretary Gerina D. Whethers to a legislative panel said the state workforce plummeted from about 49,000 in 2001 to 29,000 in 2020. The rate of turnover jumped from 12.4 percent in 2012 to 20 percent in 2020.
Smith noted that from 1983 to 2001, Kentucky state workers got a 5 percent pay raise each year except for 2 percent in 1984, 3 percent in 1985, 2 percent in 1988 and 3 percent in 1993.
“People are looking more in the private sector for jobs,” Smith said. “The work in state government increases and we are trying to do more with less. We would love to see at least a 2 percent pay increase over the next two-year budget. We don’t want to be greedy. We think that would be fair.”
If Kentucky does not raise salaries for its state government workers, “We are going to come to the point where Kentucky will end up like fast-food businesses. The employees will go someplace else,” said Smith.
Jim Carroll, president of Kentucky Government Retirees, said improved technology has played a factor in the state workforce decreasing but the major reason is pay. “We support a pay raise,” he said.
Kentucky Education Association President Eddie Campbell said, “A raise for our teachers and support staff across the commonwealth is way past due, and without question should be implemented as soon as possible.”
Campbell said Kentucky’s educators “have always been essential, but over the last year they were challenged with providing a quality education to Kentucky’s public school students in the face of a global pandemic, and they delivered.”
“With a record surplus in the state’s General Fund, there can be no debate that our teachers and our educational support staff deserve and have earned a fair wage increase,” he said.
Sara Green has taught school for 18 years — eight in Jessamine County and the last 10 in Fayette County. She is an organizer for the new KY 120 United-AFT (American Federation of Teachers).
“We totally agree with Gov. Beshear that pay raises for school personnel are in order,” said Green. “With rising health insurance costs and cost-of-living increases, we are falling behind every year in pay.”
Green said she wants to know what the legislators plan to do with the surplus. “I am always optimistic. I believe legislators want to do what’s best for kids. The first thing you want for kids is quality teachers. To get and keep quality teachers, they must be paid appropriately.”
