County BOE to consider staff rai

Loudon County Board of Education will consider Thursday funding a 2% raise for all staff.

Michael Garren, county director of schools, said the state provided the district an additional $400,000 designated for teacher raises. In response, Garren and board members said all staff should be compensated. An additional $150,000 would be needed from local reserves to pay for the increase.

Board members approved this year’s budget in February, but a raise wasn’t included at the time.

“We’re required to have a minimum fund balance with the state on a budget and if we had included this $550,000 expenditure initially then we would have dropped below the state required minimum and the state wouldn’t have approved our budget,” Garren said. “But now that the state has sent us the additional funding and we have the carryover from last year we’re able to.

“... They deserve well more than 2%, but at this point with our budget and our current funding, that’s the most that we could afford to give them, so we’re giving them the most that we can,” he added. “I hope to continue that moving forward provided the funding is allocated to us to do that.”

Bobby Johnson Jr., school board member, said staff deserved more, especially with the difficulties of the past year.

“The sad thing is that man they didn’t skip a beat,” Johnson said. “We got probably the best teachers around, best principals and staff, Mike’s got a good staff. We were able to stay in school all year, last year, and like I said, they deserve more. I’m not sure everybody knows how much they went through.”