Whitley BOE approves district-wide raises

Employees of the Whitley County School District will be receiving another pay raise in the coming school year, the third the district has offered in the last three years.

The Whitley County Board of Education unanimously approved district-wide raises last Thursday during their regular monthly meeting. The decision will allow for each employee to receive a 5 percent increase in their pay beginning with the 2024-2025 school year. However, those who are employed through grants will not receive the raise, as they are paid through the funds provided by those grants.

Thursday’s decision by the board is the third consecutive year that Whitley County School employees have been given a raise.

Last year, the board approved a 2 percent pay raise district-wide. In 2022, employees who held classified positions—or non-teaching personnel—received an 8 percent raise, with all other district employees receiving a 4 percent raise.

Superintendent John Siler said work done during this year’s legislative session in Frankfort in increasing SEEK funding and transportation budgets is what really helped the district be able to once again offer raises. Siler also noted that he felt with the district’s funds being buoyed by the new legislation, it was the right move.

“We got the best school district employees in the state. We’re just happy to be able to do this for them,” said Siler. “They deserve it.”

In other board of education business:

– The district’s 2024-2025 tentative budget was approved.

According to Siler, the budget currently shows for a 4 percent contingency, which is well above the 2 percent required by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE). The budget has several big purchases built into it, including four new school buses.

The tentative budget is the second of three budgets required annually of all school districts by KDE. A draft is done in January, which becomes a tentative budget by May and then a final, working budget in September.

– The 2024-2025 district technology plan was also approved, which includes the purchase of several hundred new devices for teachers.

Every teacher in the district will receive new Dell Latitude 7450 2-in-1 laptops to replace their existing Chromebooks. The new laptops boast several capabilities teachers previously did not have, such as the ability to rate the panel and write directly onto the device’s screen using a stylus. The devices can also transpose their screen onto the large ViewSonic screens in each classroom.

In addition to the laptops, individual printers are being purchased for each teacher’s classroom to allow for smaller-scale, on-the-fly printing.