Ector County ISD Superintendent Scott Muri expressed appreciation to the school board during his media call Wednesday for applauding proposed employee pay increases.
The proposal was made during Tuesday night’s board workshop. The board is expected to vote on the pay bumps during their May 17 meeting.
In the same vein, the district is hosting a job fair Saturday.
“On Tuesday night,” Muri said. “I was able to introduce, along with our human capital team, the compensation plan to the board of trustees. This year’s recommendation includes five opportunities for compensation for all employees in ECISD.”
“We started with our school-based individuals. Recommendation No. 1 is a 3 percent increase to professional employees located on our campuses —teachers, counselors, media specialists, administrators, etc. Those individuals that work on campuses on a daily basis,” he added.
The second recommendation was to increase the starting teacher salary from $57,000 a year to $58,750 annually.
The increase would start July 1.
“That would make us one of, if not the highest paying school district in our region,” Muri said. “It is one way that we will be able to attract, recruit and retain the most effective teachers …”
Increased pay for central office professionals who are non-campus based professionals, including coordinators, directors, etc., would receive a 2 percent raise for next year.
“The fourth recommendation was that our hourly employees would receive a 4 percent raise. Our board of trustees has been very clear that we need to target our compensation to our lowest paid employees, which would be our hourly employees,” Muri said.
“And we are raising the minimum wage to $15 in ECISD. … Over the last two years that will mean that we have taken the minimum wage from $10, where it was two years ago, to $15 which would be where we would be starting July 1, 2022,” Muri added.
He said he is excited about the recommendations and pleased to offer them to the board of trustees.
“We had a healthy discussion about those and our board will consider those recommendations at their upcoming meeting next week and will make a decision about applying those recommendations to our budget for the 2022-2023 school year,” Muri said.
“Our people, the 4,200 employees in ECISD, are the most precious resource that we have. … This type of continued investment in human capital and in the people of ECISD is critical. We’ve have been very thoughtful and strategic with this recommendation and feel confident that our employees will receive this well and (it) certainly will allow us to attract, recruit and retain the most effective individuals that provide service to each of the 32,000 students that we have in our organization,” Muri said.
The ECISD job fair is set for 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Saturday at George H.W. Bush New Tech Odessa, 300 E. 29th St.
Teachers, counselors, bus drivers, aides, school nutrition, maintenance, teachers and more are being sought.
Muri said people could be hired on the spot, but they will need to go through the vetting process.
“We encourage people, if they’re interested, to bring appropriate materials. We have online applications …,” he said.
Muri said he thinks the compensation announcement, although it has not been approved by the board yet, will be enticing to hourly workers in Odessa and Ector County.
On separate items, Muri said they celebrated National School Nurse Day Wednesday and will be celebrating district employees of the year Friday.
“Nurses have taken on more responsibility than nurses ever have. Our nurses are a little bit more than putting Band-Aids on a boo-boo. … Throughout the pandemic, our nurses have gone well above and beyond the call of duty as they have engaged with our students and families to not only care for our students as we’ve dealt with the pandemic, but also provide for the other needs our kids have on an ongoing basis,” Muri said.
He added that the nurses also care for staff members.
