Page 22 The Dispatch/Maryland Coast Dispatch May 10, 2013 Teacher Salaries Among Budget Hearing Focal Points By TRAVIS BROWN STAFF WRITER BERLIN – Residents of Worcester County were divided in their support of the proposed fiscal year 2014 budget during this week’s public hearing at Stephen Decatur High School. Debate over increasing the Board of Education’s budget received the lion’s share of remarks at the county’s budget hearing, especially on the subject of teacher raises. While both sides came armed with research, statistics and personal stories, it was supporters of an increased Board of Education budget that brought the most in terms of pure numbers to the meeting, thanks at least in part to a mass mailer campaign recently conducted by the local public education unions. Many of those who spoke in favor of a proposed step increase for school faculty, as well as a 1percent Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), did so with the justification that you get what you pay for. “If we look at research, we see that class size and the quality of instruction, i.e. the teacher, are your two best bets,” said resident Helen Trivits. Stressing the importance of preparing students in Worcester for “competition on a global market,” Trivits told the County Commis- sioners that she fully supports the current Board of Education budget. Besides the pay raise to faculty and a similar increase for bus contractors, as well as a 5-percent increase in health care costs, the budget includes $400,000 in onetime funding for technology and school improvements. The total proposed school system operating budget for FY2014 is $95,846,843, which represents a 2.58-percent increase from last year’s budget. Resident Dia Arpon asked the commission to “accept that we are living in an age driven by cuttingedge technology and we must prepare students accordingly.” A modern, technologically equipped classroom is more than a luxury, she concluded, and is actually a necessity in keeping Worcester competitive as Common Core education standards are implemented nationwide. Some opponents of the budget saw the technology increases, which included $200,000 for new computer tablets, as superfluous, however. Similar remarks were made about the faculty pay increase. Carol Frazier pointed out that Worcester teachers already receive a healthy starting salary and claimed that they are generally paid well enough that a raise is unnecessary at this time with the county staring down the barrel of a roughly $7 million budget shortfall. That shortfall will have to be eliminated either through cuts to expenditures or a county property tax rate increase, which some commissioners vowed earlier this spring would not happen. “The starting salary for a teacher in Worcester County is over $40,000 per year and that does not include the benefit package,” said Frazier. “For the time being, in these difficult times, I believe the Board of Education budget should remain as it is and not be increased.” Frazier was also critical of the mass mailer distributed in support of giving teachers a raise, citing a budget surplus last year as a source where the money could come from. “The flyer made the claim that the county had a surplus last year of $7 million,” said Frazier. “This is perhaps a little misleading.” While there was around $7 million in excess revenue last year, Frazier argued that it shouldn’t be considered a “surplus” as the money is applied to budget stabilization. “That $7 million surplus isn’t just lying around waiting to be spent,” she said. Residents Leigh Williams and Kelly Kennett had similar views with Williams, admitting that she feels teachers deserve a pay raise but that it would be unrealistic to do so in the current economic cli- mate. “Our educators certainly deserve more than they’re getting. However, there are no additional funds to supplement the proposed wage increase,” Williams said. Like Frazier, Kennett urged people not to think of any extra revenue from last year as a surplus since the money will potentially need to be applied to the county budget stabilization fund. That fund, according to Chief Finance Officer Harold Higgins, could be well cleaned out by 2015. Luckily, early fiscal projections show signs that, as Higgins put it, FY2014 could be “the bottom of the trough” with a possible rebound by FY2015. Kennett was pessimistic about any kind of economic turnaround in the near future. In arguing against a pay increase, she also cited Worcester’s teacher starting salary. “According to the National Education Association (NEA), the average starting salary for a teacher in the United States was $35,139 for a BA and a master’s level teacher with experience makes about $64,800,” said Kennett. “Worcester County’s new teachers make $42,222.” It is fair to note that the NEA website currently lists the starting teacher salary nationally slightly higher than that, at $35,672 for 2011 through 2012. The average SEE NEXT PAGE