Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear proposed a salary increase for teachers in his budget plan.
The greatest salary increase for teachers in 40 years was included in Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s “Education First” budget plan on Wednesday.
In decades, Kentucky’s Governor Andy Beshear proposed the biggest salary increase for teachers.
Beshear released a budget proposal on Wednesday called “Education First” that seeks a $1.1 billion investment in the state’s educational system including a salary increase for teachers.
The plan calls for an 11% salary increase for teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, janitors, and others.
The wage increase represents the biggest salary increase for teachers of public schools in the last 40 years.
In addition to the salary increase for teachers, the universal pre-K for Kentuckians would be completely funded under Beshear’s plan. Beshear claimed that the investment will enable parents to reenter the workforce while also enabling kids to achieve long-term academic achievement.
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According to National Education Association reports Kentucky has the 44th-lowest beginning salaries for teachers.
By investing $1.1 billion over two years to support a salary increase for teachers, the governor claimed that his plan would change that and improve Kentucky’s average teacher starting pay to $42,191, boosting the state up to the 24th spot nationally for teacher starting salaries in the NEA rankings.
The governor’s statement came a day after Daniel Cameron, the Republican candidate for governor of Kentucky, unveiled the specifics of his Cameron Catch-up Plan, which consists of proposing that the General Assembly implement a $41,500 base pay for new teachers across the state.
The governor added that aside from the salary increase for teachers, his proposal would also fully fund teacher pensions and student transportation, guarantee that health insurance premiums for educators wouldn’t rise, give teachers the option of having student loans forgiven, support their professional growth, pay for textbooks, expand mental health services, and aid in the creation of new career and technical education facilities.
In Louisville’s district, where schools were forced to close for more than a week after major disruptions on the first day of classes arose from a restructuring of bus routes, he claimed that financing, combined with the salary increase for teachers, will help prevent issues similar to these.
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