Berryville School Board approves raises for full-time employees

The Berryville School Board has approved a bump in pay for all full-time district employees.

At its regular meeting held Monday, March 16, the board voted to give all certified full-time employees a $500 raise and all full-time classified employees a $250 increase.

“Looking at it, at this time, that’s what we’re able to do,” Berryville Superintendent Owen Powell said. “We look at that every year, and we’re always going to try to give our employees the most that we can.

“Moving forward, we’re going to look at that and hopefully we’ll be able to do something like that every year. We are just trying to be competitive with our salary schedule …”

The state’s LEARNS Act, which went into effect before the 2024-2025 school year, required all districts in the state to have a $50,000 base salary for teachers, something that has caused a challenge for many smaller districts, Powell said.

“Raising that base to $50,000, it’s pretty tough on a lot of school districts,” Powell said. “But, it’s just one of those things we’ve got to continue to look at every year and try to do the best we can just to keep our employees and stay competitive with everybody.”

OTHER ITEMS

The board also approved a list of purchases for the district, including a fuel purchase of $13,046.

“We have to purchase fuel about every other month,” Powell said.

The board also OK’d renewing a liability insurance policy for the district at a cost of approximately $9,800, Powell said.

The contracts of all certified staff were also renewed.

In personnel approvals, the board OK’d the resignations/retirement of teachers Autumn Hernandez, Joshua Cox, Tamara Long, Taylor Peden and Larry McCullough and teacher/coach James Austin Long.