While some Chattanoogans still await their first raise since the Great Recession, Hamilton County teachers have enjoyed combined salary increases of more than 10 percent since the economic downturn hit with a thud in September 2008.
The Hamilton County Board of Education on Wednesday approved a balanced budget for the 2016-2017 school year that includes a 2 percent raise for teachers on their base salaries and a 1.8 percent rise for administrators.
Including the amount for the upcoming year, which must be approved by the Hamilton County commission, teachers - according to Times Free Press archives - will have received a pay increase of at least 11.33 percent (plus three bonuses) since the 2008-2009 school year.
Those pay bumps may seem excessive to many, but they are a small price to pay a professional who often must be a classroom parent, test monitor, bus wrangler, cafeteria guard and paperwork jockey. And that doesn't include combat pay for being disrespected by students, forgotten by parents and overlooked by administrators.
Much of the credit for those increases belongs to Gov. Bill Haslam, whose budget for fiscal 2017 called for the largest investment in K-12 education without a tax increase in Tennessee history.
That new money of $261 million for public education - 94.6 percent of it recurring funds - included $104.6 million for teacher raises. Haslam had pumped an additional $170 million, including $97 million for teacher raises, into public schools for fiscal 2016.
In 2015, starting teacher salaries in Hamilton County were $36,044, which ranked the district 35th out of 142 districts in the state, according to the Tennessee Education Association. That amount is less than what teachers in Memphis and Nashville schools earn but more than teachers in Knoxville.
Of course teachers, like workers in every other profession, have seen part of those raises eaten away over the period by higher health care insurance premiums. But fortunately for local teachers, their health care plan, just a few years ago, was categorized as one of the best in the state.
Teachers, further, regrettably, often have to dip into their own pockets for materials for their classes. Indeed, public school teachers spend an average of $500 out of their pockets annually, according to a 2014 national school supply association survey.
So while the salaries for our local classroom CEOs don't come close to the average annual pay of $160,000 for U.S. chief executive officers, we're glad local and state officials are recognizing the worth of our teachers. And we hope this recognition will help them find new and innovative ways to help the district's students, who have fallen behind the state in several education benchmarks, including literacy, math and ACT scores.