Teacher Pay Raise Bill Moves Past Committee

The bill which will be the vehicle for a possible teacher salary increase makes it out of a House committee on Thursday. House Bill 3129 shows the intent of lawmakers to find a consensus on funding mechanisms for a teacher pay raise.

“The public expects a meaningful compensation increase for teachers in Oklahoma schools to be signed into law before the 2016 legislative session ends,” said Rep. Josh Cockroft, the principal author of HB 3129. “We as legislators need to do what is necessary to keep parents from feeling, when they go to vote this November, they have to increase their own sales taxes to the highest in the U.S. just to keep good teachers in the classroom.”

Cockroft is referring to an effort to put a one cent sales tax to fund teacher raises and other education efforts to the vote of the people in November.

Lawmakers are looking for other ways to get teacher more money.

“Everything is on the table, and we’re working to determine what a majority of our colleagues will support to fund a pay raise for our teachers statewide,” said Rep. Dennis Casey, R-Morrison, who supported HB 3129 in committee. “We’re weighing what are and are not core services, and what is worth scaling back in order to honor the hard work of the teachers in our classrooms and avoid any perceived need for a tax increase.”


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  1. castor, 26 February, 2016

    Until we have the courage to address the fact that we have FAR too many administrators – especially highly paid superintendents – we will never have enough money. And until we have the courage to say that the best teachers deserve big raises, the average teachers deserve modest raises, and the bad teachers deserve no raises, we’ll continue to insult the best teachers by paying them the same as we pay the bad ones.

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