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The new compensation plan for Dripping Springs ISD staff was approved by the DSISD Board of Trustees at its Aug. 25 meeting. The approval had been delayed as district staff worked to implement several new laws that affected school funding.
Under the plan, teachers with 5 or more years of experience will receive a $5,000 salary increase, while teachers with 3-4 years of experience will receive a $2,500 increase. These amounts were required by House Bill 2 (HB 2), which passed the Texas Legislature earlier this year. They are funded by the state under a new Teacher Retention Allotment (TRA) fund and are permanent increases.
Teachers with 1-2 years of experience were not included in HB 2, and neither were any non-classroom district staff. However, DSISD has funded increases for these employees as well.
The starting teacher salary for the district will increase by $500 to $56,000, and the salary increase for teachers with 1-2 years of experience will be $1,700.
“We’re super excited,” Chief Human Resources Officer Linda Hall told the board. “We know that we can never pay our teachers enough, but we are excited to be able to see a significant increase for those teachers.”
Non-teaching staff will receive a 3% midpoint increase, on top of an adjustment to the pay scales that included a 1.5% increase over last year.
“All of these adjustments are going to help us to stay competitive with our neighbors, but also just help us not only attract high quality candidates, but really reward and retain our fantastic staff,” Hall said. “We want people to stay here in Dripping Springs ISD.”
Before the board took action on the plan, they heard public comments on teacher salaries from Lindsay Fredenburg, who is a parent, volunteer and substitute teacher in DSISD. She is also a former director of the Dripping Springs Education Foundation.
“Ive had the opportunity to work in education for almost 25 years with school districts, private schools, and universities of all sizes,” Fredenburg said. “In all of them, classroom teacher compensation has been a core issue and an area to be improved. Tonight, you will vote on our district compensation plan. We currently have 12.5 open positions in our school district. I think we have to do some serious self reflection as to why.”
Fredenburg said that even teachers who are getting the maximum $5,000 increase will only see a minor increase in their takehome pay.
“After taxes and TRS contributions, that amount equates to about $100 per pay period, which is a negligible amount for the professionals that we’re entrusting with our most valuable resources,” Fredenburg said.
She encouraged the district to keep looking for ways to increase teacher pay. After the compensation passed, several board members commented on the challenges with school funding.
“We’re doing what we can, and it’s just a reminder to keep talking to our legislators about the reality on the ground,” Trustee Dr. Mary Jane Ketrick said. “This last session, even though there was this historic investment in teacher pay, there were also a plethora of bills that have unfunded or underfunded mandates. That’s more costs for us to absorb.”
Trustee Rob McClelland said that part of the issue is that the district is still paying about $5 million to the state through recapture (which essentially takes tax revenue from property-wealthy districts and redistributes it to less affluent districts).
“All we did was lower our payment back to the state,” McClelland said. “At the end of the day, we’re doing this and we need to do it, and we need to continue to do it, but we still have this crippling requirement on this district that prevents us from getting to where I think we can get.”
Another item on the agenda for the meeting was an update on safety and security. McClelland reported that all of the secure vestibule updates at DSISD campuses were complete.
“That’s phenomenal, which puts us not only in full compliance with new standards, but also in a better position from a physical security perspective,” McClelland said.
McClelland said the district is also fully staffed in its School Resource Officer and School Marshalls program, which puts the district in compliance with House Bill 3, a school safety law that passed in 2023.
He said the installation of new alarm technology and detectors to deter and catch vaping is also complete.
McClelland gave a brief construction update for Darden Hill Road, which is where High School Number 2 is being constructed. That was part of the Hays County Road Bond election that was recently overturned.
“The county commissioners have put out a public notice to Hays County in regards to the issuing of Certificates of Obligation to fund different road projects, one of which is the Darden Hill expansion,” McClelland said. “That will go before the commissioners court for a vote on Sept. 30.”
He said that assuming the measure passes, the timeline for that road construction will probably be 20262027.
During the meeting, the board also heard an update on High School Number 2, and approved the construction documents that will allow the project to move on to the next steps.
Superintendent Dr. Holly Morris-Kuentz said the district is currently forming a committee to discuss a school name, school colors and the school mascot for the new high school. Applications for that committee, and several other district committees, are due on Sept. 5.
“The process will also include a broad community survey as well, just so we can get quantitative feedback from the community at large,” Morris-Kuentz said.
