AURORA | Beginning next month, all Cherry Creek School District employees are slated to get at least a 6% salary hike, pushing teacher salaries to the top in the region
Some employee groups will get even larger raises, some as high as 17%..
During a board of education meeting Tuesday, Scott Smith, chief financial officer for the school district, presented a brief report on the district’s budget for the upcoming school year. This included employee raises and enrollment changes.
Smith said different employee groups are analyzed, and their salaries are compared and adjusted to the market in three-year cycles. This year, the district analyzed the salaries of people working in the following departments: construction, maintenance, ground and carpentry (CMGC); office staff (EOP), food and nutrition services (FNS) and administrators.
Teachers’ salaries were analyzed last year, according to Smith’s presentation. Teachers’ base annual salary will rise to $61,058.
Following the district’s analysis, employees in the CMGC group will receive an 11% raise, EOP a 17% raise, FNS an 11% raise and administrators will receive a 7% raise. Those numbers include Cost of Living increases for the year. Not all employees could be eligible for the pay hikes if their positions weren’t deemed “below market.”
The new salary tops starting teacher pay in surrounding districts. In the neighboring Aurora Public Schools, the proposed starting salary for teachers during the 2024-25 school year is about $59,000. For Douglas County School District, it is $51,400.
“I think that’s a strong statement, that we value our educators and make sure that we can reward them with compensation increases in this high inflationary environment,” Smith said.
The raises for district employees will go into effect beginning July 1, according to district spokesperson Abbe Smith.
Smith said that the school district was also able to “invest $2 million in employee medical benefits,” in an effort to reduce employee premiums.
“We want to make sure that we put as much money into our students and the people who work directly with our students as possible,” Smith said.
Also discussed at the budget presentation was the ongoing declining enrollment in schools, which Scott Smith said is 5% less than what was reported before the pandemic in 2019. He added that the state’s retiree population is increasing, which will inevitably change the economy.
Scott Smith also spoke about how the state is financially supporting public education. He spoke about the recent school finance bill, which “brings us back to 1989 levels of funding, adjusted for inflation.” He also mentioned that the state continues to underfund the universal preschool program and the school district has to supplement that from the general fund.