“It’s up to us to make sure the elected leaders hear our voice and act on our concerns.”

Seven years after the Webster Parish School Board froze salaries in the face of a fiscal crisis, the parish school board voted unanimously Thursday to lift the cap and give teachers and employees a well-deserved pay raise.

“It’s been frozen for way too long,” Louisiana Federation of Teachers Representative Charlotte Crawley told KTBS-TV, “and we are very excited and commend the school board and superintendent for making this a priority.”

Last year, Crawley said, the board considered a plan that would have decreased salaries for new teachers by $3,000 and essentially kept most employee salaries frozen for about 10 years.

“That was unacceptable, and we worked hard to help the board understand that teachers and school employees would not tolerate that plan,” Crawley said.

“It’s up to us as teachers and school employees to make sure the elected leaders hear our voice and act on our concerns,” she said.

Parish leaders have said that the system lost teachers to other, better-paying districts during the freeze.
As employees begin moving up the salary schedule once again, they will get extra checks as back pay in October. Twelve month employees will get three months of back pay; 10-month emp0loyees will get two months of back pay, and nine month employees will get one month of back pay.

Click here to see the KTBS-TV coverage of the Webster pay raise issue.