Pay panel to give Carney educator salary proposals next month

The PECC has finalized its suggestions on increasing educator pay in Delaware.

Raises seem likely to be on the way for all Delaware educators, from teachers to bus drivers to custodians and everything in between.

The state Public Education Compensation Committee will submit its recommendations to Gov. John Carney’s office by Nov. 15.

Whatever salary recommendations he includes – the committee’s or another version – in his proposed budget for fiscal year 2025, must be approved by the General Assembly.

The educator raises popped up several times Monday when the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Committee met and discussed factors affecting the fiscal year 2025 budget, which starts July 1.

Money is expected to be tight and higher salaries, higher costs for insurance for both retirees and employees and rising Medicaid costs are among the reasons why.

At Monday’s compensation committee meeting, the 15-person group, which includes legislators and education leaders. discussed creating state-funded units for information technology workers.

The group was deciding between two funding mechanisms for IT workers: one would cost the state $4,837,830 next fiscal year, and the other would cost the state $6,446,395 next fiscal year.

The committee, formed to make pay recommendations to make Delaware a more attractive place to work for educators, opted for the more expensive option.

Delaware created the committee at the start of the 2022-2023 school year after neighboring Maryland passed a law that would bump teachers’ starting salaries to $60,000 by 2026. New Jersey is also raising teacher salaries.

Here’s what the committee settled on as recommendations for each employee group:

1305 – teachers and professional staff: a 2% increase plus a $1,875 stipend (state cost = $212,658,997 over next four fiscal years).
1308 – secretaries: a 2+ increase plus a $500 stipend and condensing the scale from five positions to three (state cost = $1,407,799 for fiscal year 2025).
1311 – custodians: a 2% increase, stipends ranging from $439 to $1,105 and condensing the scale from six to four positions (state cost = $2,472,787 for fiscal year 2025).
1322 – food service: a 2.5% increase (state cost = $1,771,234 for fiscal year 2025).
1324 – paraprofessionals: a 1% increase and stipends ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 (state cost = $3,096,586 for fiscal year 2025).
Bus drivers: Increase hourly wages from $22.50 per hour to $25 (state cost = $4,847,348).
IT employees: created funding units for workers (state cost = $6,926,517 for fiscal year 2025).