(Audubon) Teachers in the Audubon School District will receive a 3.27% salary increase for next year.
In addition to the teacher salaries rising, Superintendent Eric Trager says non-certified staff will receive a $1.00 per hour raise. They also approved bonuses for licensed staff not included in the Governor’s teacher retention bonuses. “There were several of our licensed staff that did not qualify for that. They had a pretty narrow definition of who qualified as a teacher so for example our school counselors didn’t qualify, our school social worker, our teacher leaders, those folks didn’t qualify. We asked the board a bonus for those folks that didn’t qualify for the Governor’s bonus and the board approved that as well. We have our package of salary increases pretty well completed and contracts are going out. We are excited to have that behind us and we hope we’ve done right by our employees this year.”
Trager thanks Governor Kim Reynolds for taking an opportunity to impact the number of teaching candidates through her new apprenticeship program. “The Governor during her state of the state address announced a teacher apprenticeship program which allows folks that are currently serving as associates in our schools to receive grant funds to go on and get a teaching degree. The issue for small schools is in order to qualify for one of the grants you had to have ten people that would be willing to take that path.”
However, at a school the size of Audubon, finding ten associates interested in the program is unlikely. Trager says he’s appreciative of the Rural Schools Advocates of Iowa for coming together to make something happen. “You’re maybe going to have one or two or three, so that wasn’t really feasible for us. So our Rural School Advocates of Iowa (RSAI) stepped up and partnered with Western Governors’ University and we are going to do a consortium of schools that are members of RSAI and that’s going to allow our folks to take advantage of that.”
During Monday’s meeting the school board approved three new hires. Jacob Privia will teach middle school and high school PE, Katie Boehm has been approved as an elementary teacher, and Abbygail Stedham will teach high school math.
