Colby School District staff to receive raises for 2024-25
By Nathaniel Underwood
The Colby school board enacted several measures that will increase compensation for existing and incoming district staff at their most recent board meeting. Annual salary increases for all staff, additional compensation for continued education and adjustments to the base teaching salary and hiring bonus, as well as adding a hiring bonus for support staff, were all decisions the board made in hopes of being competitive with other area schools in both retaining staff and attracting new employees.
The board approved a 4.5 percent base pool increase in pay for all four categories of district staff after receiving the recommendation from the personnel committee and administration. This raise was larger than both the 4.25 percent increase that staff saw in 2023 and the 3.2 percent increase in 2022.
“As we’ve talked, we are trying to address some concerns about previous years not keeping up with neighboring school districts in various ways,” superintendent Dr. Patrick Galligan explained at Monday’s meeting. “So we are hoping to address some of that through a pay increase of 4.5 percent this year.”
Galligan cited that this increase was slightly higher than recent data on Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure of average shifts in consumer prices that can be used to help determine changes in cost of living. The 4.5 percent pay increase is higher than the 4.12 percent increase in
See COLBY SCHOOL BOARD/ Page 5 Colby School Board
Continued from page 1
CPI for this fiscal year, according to data from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.
The past two years, the base pool increases given by the district were lower than the CPI increases, with the 2022 base pool increase of 3.2 percent less than the 4.70 percent change in CPI while the 2023 base pool increase of 4.25 percent was almost half the 8.05 percent increase in CPI that year.
“We are trying to make sure that we have employees who are happy here, want to stay here, and continue with some stability,” Galligan added. “We had a lot of transition last year, especially amongst our support staff but also across the board, so we are looking to solidify some of those positions and make sure people want to stay.”
In addition, the board also approved increases to compensation for completion of six credits worth of graduate level courses or three consecutive years of their Professional Practice Goals. Prior to the change, a compensation of $750 was used for both instances, but now teachers will see $1,250 for the graduate coursework and $1,000 for the educator evaluation processes that utilize the Professional Practice Goals.
A raise in base teaching salary, from $38,2027 to $40,707, as well as changes to hiring bonuses, were also enacted for the coming school year with the intention of being more competitive with area schools. The teaching hiring bonus was increased from $1,250 to $2,000 and a $1,000 hiring bonus for support staff was created.
Teachers and support staff that have already been hired for the 2024-25 school year will receive the new bonus.
“The personnel committee and myself discussed a lot of different ways we can make this district attractive to new employees and so another strategy that they came up with is increasing or starting a hiring bonus for parts of our staff,” Galligan said. “Establishing the $1,000 hiring bonus for support staff hopefully will help, which has been challenging and sometimes difficult for us to find.”
Other business
â– â– The meeting was the first for the newly assembled board. Dave Decker was selected as the president, Cody Gumz as vice president, Teri Hanson as clerk and Lony Oestreich as treasurer. New board member Brian Streveler served at his first meeting.
â– â– The board approved the continuation of both the SOAR and FALCON programs. SOAR is a program held at Medford that provides additional opportunities for 18-21 year olds with disabilities who have an IEP to continue to work towards the goals cited in their IEPs while FALCON is an alternative high school program for Abbotsford and Colby students.
