Pay Increase FY27
Pay Increase FY27: What's Actually in the New Salary Schedule
As you know, keeping great teachers in our classrooms is a top priority for me, both because my daughters attend HCS and because it's the first thing I said I'd focus on when I ran. The board recently approved the salary schedule for the 2026-27 school year, and I wanted to walk through what's actually in it, not just the headline number, but where the money comes from and what the district chose to do with its own dollars on top of that.
The Baseline: A 2% Raise
Every certificated and classified position in the district, teachers, principals, nurses, classified staff, saw a flat 2% increase this year. It's worth being clear about where that comes from: this raise is a state mandate, funded through this year's Education Trust Fund budget out of Montgomery. It's not a decision the Huntsville City Schools board made on its own, and it's not local tax dollars paying for it. Every district in Alabama implementing the state's minimum salary matrix saw the same increase.
That distinction matters to me. I want District 3 families to know the difference between "the state set a floor and every district met it" and "our local board chose to invest more." Both are worth knowing about, but they're not the same thing, and I don't want to take credit locally for something that came from the state.
What the Board Actually Chose to Add
This is the part that got my attention, because these are the choices HCS made with its own local dollars, on top of what the state required.
1. A real, experience-based pay scale for our hearing-impaired interpreters. Before this year, our interpreters were paid a single flat salary with no way to grow it, no matter how many years of experience they built. This schedule replaces that with a genuine step scale, worth up to 5% more for our most experienced interpreters, on top of the standard 2%. For our Licensed Interpreters specifically, that's the difference between a flat $62,235 and up to $65,408 for the most experienced staff in that role. It's a small group of employees, but it's exactly the kind of fix that matters: rewarding the people who've stuck around and gotten better at a hard, specialized job, instead of paying a rookie interpreter and a veteran interpreter the exact same rate forever.
2. A new assistant tennis coach position, a $1,100 supplement that didn't exist in last year's schedule at all. Small dollar amount, but it's a real gap that got filled, likely relieving a head coach who was covering both varsity squads solo.
3. A bump to the middle school cheer coach supplement, from $2,200 to $2,800. That's a 27% increase for a specific coaching role, not part of the general raise, a targeted decision to bring that supplement more in line with what the job actually involves.
4. A one-time longevity stipend: $1,500 paid in December, and another $1,500 in May, for staff who make it through each half of the school year. This one especially caught my eye. I spent 22 years in the Army, and I've seen firsthand what it costs an organization when it loses good people it can't afford to lose, the institutional knowledge that walks out the door, the time and money it takes to recruit and train a replacement, the disruption to the people left behind. Rewarding people for staying is exactly the kind of thinking I've been pushing for since I started running for this seat, so it's genuinely good to see it show up here. To be clear-eyed about it: this is a one-time stipend for this school year, tied to the district's current fund balance, not a permanent policy change. But it's a real, tangible thank-you to people who show up for our kids every single day, and I hope it's the start of a broader conversation about retention, not a one-off.
Why This Distinction Matters
I keep coming back to the state-versus-local point because I think it's easy for any of these updates to blur together into "the district gave everyone a raise," when the more accurate and more useful story is: the state set a floor, and our local board chose to go further in a few specific, deliberate places. That's a better story, not a worse one. It means the extra dollars went where the board identified an actual problem, an interpreter pay scale with no room to grow, a coaching gap, a retention risk, rather than just being spread evenly and thinly across everyone.
Looking Ahead
Big shoutout to the board for pushing these through. I don't have a vote yet, I won't be sworn in until November 10, but as someone who ran on keeping great teachers in our classrooms, this is the kind of decision-making I want to be part of. Can't wait to take the seat in November.