Campbell County Schools Superintendent Shelli Wilson spoke at the Feb. 20 school board meeting about how House Bill 6, the state’s budget, would affect the district—most notably employee raises.
One of the district’s vision pillars is recruiting and retaining high-quality staff and students, and Wilson said staff salaries are a huge component of this vision. Under HB6, which currently resides in the senate and is still being determined, Campbell County Schools projects that they can only offer 1-2.6% raises in the next school year.
Wilson said something they want people to remember when thinking about HB6 is in the 2019-2020 school year, a first-year Campbell County Schools teacher made $40,064. In 2023-2024, a first-year Campbell County teacher made $44,329. Wilson said this has the same buying power as $36,179 in January 2019.
“So, what that tells us is that the buying power of today’s teacher salary in Campbell County is down approximately 9.7% from before the pandemic, and that’s with the outstanding raises that our board has been able to provide,” Wilson said.
The state uses the Support Education Excellence in Kentucky, also known as SEEK, as a funding distribution process between schools. The funds are a combination of state and local dollars.
“It’s important to know that when we hear about more money going into the SEEK formula and that we’d be able to provide these substantial raises for staff when you really put the numbers into our budgets and look at the projections for revenue that it comes down to a very modest increase that we would be able to provide for our staff,” Campbell County Board of Education Chair Kimber Fender said.
The district provided two charts to show what has been happening through the years since 2001 in state efforts and in local efforts. Orange represents the local and blue is the state.
Wilson said the local effort is increasing significantly while the state effort is decreasing or staying roughly the same. SEEK funding is currently just above $4,000 per student. School Board Member Richard Mason said that is the state’s average and that Campbell County is one of the worst-funded in the state.
“Somehow, they have an idea that we’re a rich district,” Mason said. “Our funding is about $2,600 per student, not $4,000. The more you can make people aware of it and bring it to people’s attention—it needs to get fixed.”
Wilson said that the SEEK funding is important to note when discussing HB6 because numbers that don’t necessarily apply to Campbell County are thrown out. However, she said they have run the current numbers in HB6 (she noted that there are tax assessments and a transportation formula that isn’t nailed down yet) and have figured that it will allow the district to give 1-2.6% raises for the next school year for Campbell County employees.
“So let that sink in when you look at us being down approximately 9.7% for teachers,” Wilson said. “When you’re looking at the buying power of today’s teacher salaries.”
$3.7 billion of taxpayer dollars is currently in the state’s reserve, and Wilson said that it is projected to be 5.2 billion in the budget reserve trust fund.
Wilson said the money is there for legislators to help.
The district said legislators can do so by funding a plan to reach a SEEK base of $5,400 per student over the next four years, starting with $4,500 in fiscal year 2025 and adding $300 each year.
“That is a projected plan that will allow us to catch up,” Wilson said. “We are urging the general assembly to pay attention to this.”
Another thing the district pointed out was that Kentucky’s average teacher salary is lower than surrounding states at $38,010. Compared to the states, Ohio at $39,094, Indiana at $40,959, Tennessee at $40,280, Illinois at $42,171, and Florida at $45,171.
“When we think about this, this has a huge impact on our Kentucky students,” Wilson said.
The school district also looked at the teacher turnover rate.
“The current teacher turnover rate in Kentucky is 24.9%,” Wilson said. “In Campbell County, it’s 16.4%. Can you imagine running a business with a 16.4% turnover rate? It’s very difficult.”
