Frederick County Teachers Get Pay Raise Under New Contract

It was approved last week by the Board of Education.                                                                  

 

 

Frederick, Md (KM) A nearly 2% pay raise for   teachers was approved unanimously last week by the Frederick  County Board of Education. The one-year agreement contains a 1.9% step increase. For teachers who hold bachelor’s degrees and are continuing their education, they will be eligible for a mid-year salary boost based on the number of credits they’ve completed.

“Frederick County is still at the bottom of the pay scale statewide,” said Board of Ed President Brad Young. “We were actually paying our starting teachers less than Washington County–which is ridiculous–and Carroll County, some of the other counties. It makes it tougher to hire good quality teachers. So we’ve made a commitment to try to get our scale to where it’s at.”

Young notes this has been a problem for many years in Frederick County. “We’re competitive at the higher end of the scale and that’s  because of the longevity of those teachers,” he said. “But at the starting and mid-range, we’re losing a lot of teachers to other counties because they pay more.”

“Pay raise was not huge and they wanted more,” acknowledges  Young. “But we gave what we felt was appropriate given the circumstances and given our budget, and trying to make sure that we stay competitive with our neighboring jurisdictions to make sire  that we can continue to attract the best teachers.”

This is a one-year contract and the School System and the Frederick County Teachers Association are expected to reopen the agreement next year for negotiations and amendments.

 

By Kevin McManus