PHOENIX — As the new school year gets underway, teachers are seeing more money in their paychecks.
Teachers in the Mesa Unified School District got 5% pay raises this school year after getting 10% raises last year.
Shaun Holmes, the district’s associate superintendent of human and capital resources, said it’s helping with recruitment but added teacher vacancies remain.
“We actually still currently have about 100 vacancies that we’re looking to fill, and I would say about half of those are in the area of special education,” he said.
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This comes after the approval of Gov. Doug Ducey’s plan to give teachers a 20% pay raise by the year 2020. As part of the plan, many teachers got a 10% pay raise last school year.
Like in Mesa, teachers in the Chandler and Queen Creek unified school districts got 10% raises last year and are getting 5% raises this year.
“They deserve it,” said Terry Locke, director of community relations for Chandler Unified School District. “They’re highly educated. They have an important task of educating our young people.”
Locke added teacher pay raises are important for parents as well as for the business sector, which he said want to have “strong educational programs in place not only to serve the students of their employees but also provide the future workforce.”
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