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Teachers get $218,000 more; increase below prior 2 years
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · May 27, 2016


The West Branch Board of Education on May 9 approved teacher salary and benefit increases of 3.45 percent, or about $218,000, for the coming school year.


Business Manager Angie Klinkkammer said the value of the raises is lower than the past two years since budget cuts began. With general turnover, teachers accepting early retirement packages and some hours cut, there are slightly fewer people to pay and that group – as a whole – is making a little less money.

Here is how the figures worked out, according to Klinkkammer’s calculations:

• With the $218,000 raise approved May 9, she predicts the total salaries and benefits for the 2016-17 school year will come to about $4.59 million.

• Last year, the board approved a little less than $231,000 in increases which, by the time the school’s fiscal year comes to an end on June 30, should mean paying out about $4.45 million in salaries and benefits by the end of the 2015-16 school year.

• In the 2014-15 school year, teachers saw salaries and benefits go up by more than $242,000 and the school district paid out $4.32 million.

• For the 2013-14 school year, the school board approved an extra $171,000 for salaries and benefits, which amounted to paying about $4.2 million.

The most recent raise of 3.45 percent was based on the average of the first 50 teacher union contracts negotiated by school districts throughout Iowa this year.

Board member Jodi Yeggy said she appreciates the staff.

“I want the staff to know I’d love to make that double if we could,” she said of the compensation package.

The West Branch Education Assoc. is in the first year of a two-year contract, but the second year’s salaries and benefits were left unfinished when the contract was approved a year ago, which led to this May 9 school board action.

Superintendent Kevin Hatfield, in a memo to school board members, said the total increase for all staff – teachers, associates, support staff, principals and himself – works out to about 3.1 percent in increases.

In the school district’s general fund, salaries and benefits make up about 76 to 77 percent of that money, Klinkkammer said.