Pay increases for the Washington Education Association and the support staff were approved by the Washington Community School Board during a special meeting on March 22nd.

The board approved a $200 increase on the salary schedule base which gives a 3.12% increase factoring a 9.95% insurance increase for the 2021-2022 school year. Superintendent Willie Stone explains the increase for support staff wages, “We are getting to a point where we’re struggling to get people to apply for our positions and a lot of that is because they’re able to make better money elsewhere. So we’re going to increase our support staff a dollar this year which is a 7% raise, 7.01% raise. Trying to get us back into the ballpark of where we need to be to not only maintain our good employees that we have and keep them on staff but also get good people who are applying for positions, make sure we’re paying them accordingly.”

The board approved the support staff increase, as Stone mentions there are 110-120 employees in their staff. Stone mentions the district hasn’t been paying support staff as much as neighboring districts. The board also approved a contract return/resignation bonus program which would give staff $300 for renewing their contract or submitting a resignation timely, for which the board is applying for $120,000 in CARES Act funding.