Maryville school board OKs $73M budget with $50,750 starting pay for teachers

All Maryville City Schools employees could see their pay increase next year.

The Maryville Board of Education on Monday, May 20, approved a $73.2 million general purpose budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year that puts new teachers’ starting salaries at $50,750. The $50,750 base pay for beginning teachers — those with bachelor’s degrees, but no experience — would represent about a 6% raise over the district’s current starting salary of $47,851.

Teachers with more experience or advanced degrees would net smaller percentage increases to their pay, while school employees without teaching certifications under the new budget would receive an additional 50 cents per hour.

The school board’s vote sends the budget to the Maryville City Council, which will make a decision on the plan in June.

Ahead of the deadline

Setting a base pay of $50,750 for new teachers would put MCS years ahead of a looming, state-set deadline. All of Tennessee’s public school districts are required to pay new teachers with four-year degrees $50,000 by the start of the 2026-2027 school year.

That requirement sparked extensive conversation among MCS administrators and new and veteran teachers, MCS Director Mike Winstead told The Daily Times Tuesday.

“We need to make a real hit on our starting pay,” Winstead said in a phone interview. But other educators will also mark pay increases. For example, he said, teachers with doctorates should see percentage increases to their salaries of about 2.5%, he said.

Starting pay for teachers with master’s degrees would be set at $57,550.

“(The salary scale change) keeps us very competitive with the districts all across the state — certainly the ones in our vicinity,” he said Monday. The new budget would help Maryville retain a spot among the top five school districts for pay of teachers with master’s degrees, and place it in the top 10 for pay with a bachelor’s degree, he noted during school board members’ discussion. Previous Daily Times reporting states that MCS is now ranked 18th in the state for starting pay of teachers with bachelor’s degrees.

Other districts

Winstead noted Monday that in East Tennessee both Alcoa City Schools and Oak Ridge Schools have already set new teachers’ pay at or past the $50,000 mark.

“We beat them on the back end,” he said, noting that the pay differences among MCS and other school districts diminish with step increases.

Of the other school districts in Blount County, Alcoa City Schools currently pays its newest teachers $50,000 to start, though a recent proposal would raise that number to $52,250.

Starting pay for teachers with a degree and no experience for Blount County Schools is currently $42,865; a recent county budget recommendation would change that figure to $50,000. The county’s budget also affects city school systems through a split in tax dollars. If Blount commissioners in June adopt the budget committee’s current recommendation, MCS will receive about $200,000 in additional funds.

‘Education as a whole’

The move to $50,000 statewide will have both positive and negative consequences for MCS, Winstead noted.

“It’s exciting, certainly, for the education as a whole,” he said, commenting on pay increases in both Maryville’s schools and Knox County’s. “It’s great for education as a whole, that we’re seeing that high rise and match where I think they ought to be, and possibly even further.”

“But, again, our gap (in pay among MCS and other districts), even though we’re in that top group, that gap is not nearly (where) it once was,” he continued. Board member Nick Black echoed that concern, saying, “I want to do as much as we can every year.”

Referencing raises for the upcoming year, Black added, “I hope we can do that or better every year.”