Sunnyside School District hiking teacher salaries nearly 8.5 percent

Published: Jul. 20, 2016 at 8:51 PM MST|Updated: Jul. 21, 2016 at 11:22 AM MST
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TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) - The Sunnyside Unified School District said it's using all of it's Proposition 123 money to give raises to its employees.

Prop. 123 was a statewide school funding issue voters approved in May.

Sunnyside said its teachers are getting an 8.45 percent raise. Depending on years of service and other considerations, the district said some teachers are getting more than that.

A Sunnyside spokeswoman said, among them are teachers who have worked for the district a long time and are being caught up to where they should be after years with little or no raises.

She said starting teachers will receive $33,624 a year. The district hopes the pay hikes send a message that it wants teachers to make a professional wage.

"I think that as time goes on, it will continue to be evident that Sunnyside is a wonderful place to work that we care about our teachers. We care about our students and our community. And I think that, after some time, then teachers will start flocking to Sunnyside Unified School District," said Laura Emslie, Sunnyside Unified School District Human Resources Director for Recruitment and Retention.

The Sunnyside District said it's giving other employees raises too, with administrators getting the smallest increase of 3.75 percent. Classified employees are getting 6.5 percent more. Professional non-teaching employees will see 6.2 percent more, according to the district.

Emslie said another attraction that should appeal to new teachers is that Sunnyside is a Title 1 district because so many of its students are in the federal Free or Reduced Lunch program.

"That's a real benefit for lots of our teachers who have student loans. They need to work in a Title 1 school in order to participate in the federal student loan forgiveness program. And that's huge because they can have their student loans forgiven after working with us for a certain number of years," Emslie said.

The teacher pay raise appears to be popular among Sunnyside District students and parents too.

Selina Encinas-Moraga, Parent: "I just think it's good that the teachers are getting compensated because I mean they have to put up with a lot. I don't think that teachers get the credit that they should. And I think that the salary boost will help their morale," said parent Selina Encinas-Moraga.

Her son, Brandon Moraga, said, "I think it's good that they're getting a raise because of all the stuff they have to put up with, like students and everything they have to go through."

"Yeah I think that's a good thing because they work really hard," said student Alexa Cordova.

"I feel like it's about time because I had actually really good teachers that left because they weren't getting paid enough," said student Mariah Romero.

"I think it's great that they actually doing it. I even think that they should even get paid a little bit more for what they do and all these students," said parent Leslie Jaime.

School starts next Wednesday in the Sunnyside District which is still looking to fill 14 teacher openings.

A spokeswoman said the much larger Tucson Unified School District has 144 classroom teacher slots to fill, with another 34 openings for exceptional education teachers.

School starts in TUSD on August 4.

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