The Mid-Prairie School Board and the Mid-Prairie Education Association recently held negotiations regarding teacher and support staff salaries and benefits for the coming school year, and they have announced the approval of a 4% increase. Superintendent Mark Schneider said the amount of the increase was greatly motivated by the lack of an increase last year. He explained, “The interesting fact to that settlement is that last year the MPEA agreed to basically a 0% increase to salary and benefits. And so as we talked about it this year, if you average the last two years’ settlements, it’s been an annual 2% increase.”
Schneider said last year the teachers and support staff didn’t receive a raise due to the district having a scarce amount of resources. In an effort to cut the budget, the teachers and staff agreed to hold at their current compensation. Schneider hopes the 4% increase this year will be an effective reward for their patience. He adds, they were able to give the teachers and staff a raise due to increasing their enrollment by 47.5 students over last year. The settlement only covers teachers and support staff. The school board hasn’t yet negotiated the salaries for the administrative staff.