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During the July 7 Chambers County School District Board Meeting, Superintendent Casey Chambley brought up that CCSD was working to improve the salary schedule for each employee. On Wednesday, Chambley brought the new salary schedule before the board to be voted on, which was approved by a unanimous vote.

Originally salary schedules went out to nine years, meaning after an employee worked for the CCSD for nine years they were not eligible for a raise. The new schedules go out several more years, some going as far as 24 years. For employees that should be further along in their pay schedule, Chambley said they will be moving up their respective pay schedule, meaning if a person had 15 years of experience but had their schedule capped at nine years, they would now be earning the respective jump in salary.

“We were having a hard time finding support personnel for different things and just like it is with the teacher situation, we raised the teacher pay and everyone got the 2%,” Chambley said. “We’re having just as much of a hard time finding custodians, support personnel, bus drivers and CNP workers. Those people are just as important for us running our system as our teachers are. Without those people, we don’t feed the kids and transport the kids and enroll the kids. We felt like it was fair for us to move those salary schedules out.

“Our tax revenues are up for ad valorem as well as our sales tax revenues are up in the county. They’re up in the city of Valley a lot. Our county and we are receiving more money, close to $1 million more than we were last year. We want to make sure that our teachers, support staff and constituents know that we’re passing that back and investing that in our staff. We’re going to be spending a lot of that money in our buildings and putting that money back. When you spend your money in our county, we’re using it and putting it back into our people and our buildings. That was one of the reasons we felt prepared to do this along with CARES Act and ESSERS funds that have also taken some pressure off our of general fund and is allowing us to level the playing field.”