The Blair Oaks Board of Education approved pay raises for both faculty and staff at its meeting Tuesday night.
The pay adjustments include $700 to the base salary and $25 to each step on the new salary schedule for the 2014-15 school year.
In other words, a new teacher who was hired this year for $32,550 will earn $33,675 next year - a raise of $1,125 or 3.46 percent. An experienced teacher who earned $48,650 this year will be bumped to $50,500 - a raise of $1,850 or 3.8 percent.
The board also approved a plan to add six "steps" to the schedule for teachers with bachelor's degrees. Superintendent Jim Jones noted Missouri used to require teachers to earn their master's degrees within 10 years. Now that that regulation is no longer in effect, the district is hoping to create more room for teachers with bachelor's degrees to move up the salary schedule.
"Our goal is to hire and retain qualified teachers at every level," Jones said.
Administrators will also see raises in the 2.4 percent to 2.6 percent range, Jones told the board.
"Those are aligned with the top teachers," he said.
Jones, himself, will see a raise of 1.9 percent.
Jones makes the recommendations with the help of a faculty and staff committee. He noted sometimes the group only recommends boosting the base salary; other years they also add more funding to the salary schedule steps. This year they recommended the latter.
"They wanted to do something to address all teachers," he said.
This year's pay plan also includes a 50-cent increase in the hourly wage for "classified" staff, or workers employed in the cafeterias, as janitors, etc.
Although the Board of Education talked briefly about health and life insurance benefits at Tuesday's meeting, they haven't yet finalized any decisions.
On Tuesday, the board also:
• Heard presentations on how the elementary, middle and high schools reach out to at-risk children.
• Approved a lengthy list of summer capital improvement projects for the maintenance staff to tackle.
• Approved a participation plan for the A+ program. To date more than $1.8 million in scholarship funding has been provided to Blair Oaks students who have participated in the state's A+ program, which provides scholarship funds to high school students who maintain grade point averages of 2.5, have good attendance and who perform at least 50 hours of unpaid tutoring.