Canyons School District will raise starting salaries for new teachers and hand out one-time bonuses to licensed educators.
The board voted unanimously Tuesday to hike the starting salary 4.5 percent, to $41,835 for the 2018-19 school year. Educators, including new hires, will also receive a one-time $500 bonus.
About 180 veteran teachers who started work before July 1998 and 40 elementary dual-immersion teachers will receive an additional $500 bonus.
In addition to bonuses, Canyons teachers will receive regularly scheduled incremental raises and cost-of-living increases.
The new compensation package is the district’s second raise in two years. Last year, Canyons boosted its starting pay to $40,000 as part of a wave of raises among Utah’s largest school districts.
For the 2018-19 school year, Canyons joins Jordan, Granite and Tooele school districts in a second round of raises to entry-level pay and handing out one-time bonuses. The bonuses are funded in part by an increase to the amount of spending per pupil, known as the weighted-pupil unit, and a newly created Teacher and Student Success account, which lawmakers could plausibly divert for other purposes in future budget years.
Canyons officials remarked before Tuesday’s vote about how successful negotiations with teachers were this year. The new pay agreement is subject to ratification from the teachers’ union.
