DeSoto School Board to consider employee raises

MANSFIELD, La. — DeSoto Parish School Board members on Thursday will consider a proposed 2026-27 salary schedule that would provide a 6.8% pay raise for all full-time employees while creating new incentive programs aimed at recruiting and retaining teachers in hard-to-staff positions and schools.

If approved, the raises will bump DeSoto’s teacher salaries above surrounding districts, even as others also are considering increases for their staff.

“First and foremost, the goal is to make sure we’re at or near the top in the region" because that helps in recruitment and retention of teachers, schools Superintendent Clay Corley told KTBS. “We look at the districts that touch us and want to be competitive as best as we can.”

But another important factor to consider before coming up with a proposed raise amount was sustainability. Corley reached out to a consulting company to run the numbers against worse case scenarios to know if the parish’s finances will handle the increase at least five years out.

“I wanted to know without a shadow of a doubt are the raises sustainable,” Corley said.

The raises will cost the district about $3.3 million, while the inventive packages add another $550,000, bringing the total budget impact to about $4 million. That also includes benefits, retirement and payroll taxes.

District administrators said the proposal represents more than a year of research and planning and was developed with input from directors, principals and board leadership.

"We are still excited about what we're going to bring to you today," Human Resources Director Tamela Phillips told board members at a recent Budget and Finance Committee meeting. "We're excited about what the proposal might mean for our staff across the board."

The largest component of the proposal is a 6.8% across-the-board pay raise for certified and classified employees. The increase would be paid through employees' regular monthly paychecks rather than through lump-sum payments.

Phillips said district leaders focused on two primary factors when developing the proposal: long-term sustainability and maintaining salaries above those offered by neighboring districts.

"We wanted us to be above the districts that are around us," Phillips said.

Caddo Parish Schools on Tuesday considered a 6% raise for its employees. Without that, DeSoto would be about $7,000 above in teacher pay. But if the Caddo School Board approves the proposal, DeSoto’s pay scale will still be about $3,000 higher, Phillips said.

Starting teachers make about $51,500, and that would go up to about $55,000. A 10-year teacher would see an increase from about $56,500 to $60,342, Corley said.

“That puts us above Bossier at every level,” he added.

Incentives program

In addition to the raise, administrators proposed a new incentive program targeting special education teachers, which they identified as the district's most difficult staffing area.

District data presented during the meeting showed that 21% of DeSoto Parish special education teachers are uncertified, while 31% of all uncertified teachers in the district work in special education positions.

Under the proposal, certified special education inclusion and self-contained classroom teachers would receive a $3,000 annual stipend. Teachers working toward special education certification would receive $2,000, while non-certified teachers pursuing certification would receive $1,000. The incentive would apply districtwide and be paid at the end of the school year.

“Our SPED teachers are also under a lot of extra pressure with the paperwork that they have to do, and the meetings that they have to have with parents, and a lot of times, not a lot of times, but a few times, we'll have teachers that are certified in SPED, but they just don't want to teach SPED because they don't want the extra, extra headache of SPED, so they're, they're pulling out,” Phillips said.

Administrators also proposed a new incentive program for employees working at designated hard-to-staff schools.

Schools would be identified using a point system based on teacher turnover, certification rates, student achievement, student needs and working conditions. District officials said schools scoring between 50 and 100 points would qualify as hard-to-staff campuses.

Under the proposal, certified core teachers, counselors, administrators and special education teachers at qualifying schools would receive a $2,500 annual stipend. Certified non-core teachers would receive $1,500, while non-certified employees working toward certification would receive $1,000.

The district currently provides a $1,000 supplement to certain teachers at Mansfield schools. Administrators said the new model would expand incentives to more employees across entire campuses rather than only selected classrooms.

Board members spent considerable time discussing eligibility requirements for the incentive programs, including a proposal that employees miss no more than 30 days during the school year. That brought some pushback and discussion from board members about whether those days off would be related to medical leave. 

Phillips said the attendance requirement was designed to promote consistent instruction for students while acknowledging that medical leave and other circumstances would continue to be reviewed.

Employees also would be required to complete their contract year and remain assigned to qualifying positions to receive the incentives.

The proposal includes additional recognition incentives for Teachers of the Year, New Teachers of the Year, Support Staff of the Year and Principals of the Year.

Under the plan, school-level winners would receive $1,000, with additional $1,000 awards available as participants advance through district, semifinalist, finalist and winner levels.

District officials also recommended reducing the maximum high school math teacher incentive for newly hired employees from $10,000 to $5,000 beginning July 1. Current recipients would continue receiving the existing incentive.

Administrators said research indicates $5,000 remains an effective recruitment and retention amount and noted that the current incentive has occasionally created disparities with other leadership positions within schools.

Additional proposed salary schedule changes include:

• Moving six middle and high school bookkeepers from 11-month to 12-month contracts to provide support during summer operations.
• Standardizing certain employee work calendars by reducing some 200-day positions to 196 days and some 180-day positions to 176 days without reducing pay.
• Raising licensed practical nurse salaries from approximately $25,350 to a range beginning around $31,000 to improve recruitment efforts.
• Establishing a standardized $20-per-hour rate for after-hours bus driving assignments.
• Updating language governing math supplements and other existing stipends.

Sustainability report

Budget and Finance Committee members also received findings from a financial sustainability study showing that a proposed 7% employee compensation package could be sustained over the next five years, even under a worst-case economic scenario.

Corley said the study, conducted with consulting firm Lean Frog, was designed to determine whether the district could afford a meaningful pay increase without jeopardizing its financial reserves or daily operations.

Corley, who was not at the helm in 2012, but remembers a hit the district took then, leading to a school closure and employee layoffs. 

Officials said the analysis examined multiple revenue projections through 2030, including best-case, most-likely and worst-case scenarios. Because oil and gas activity accounts for about 67% of the district's revenue and remains highly volatile, the district based its planning on the most conservative projections.

After testing the proposal against what administrators described as a total market disruption scenario, the study concluded that a 7% compensation adjustment would be sustainable.

The proposal includes a 6.8% permanent salary increase for all employees and an additional incentive package. Corley said the across-the-board raise would preserve the district's existing career ladder structure.

School officials emphasized that the financial model does not rely on future operational efficiencies currently being studied by Lean Frog. The consulting firm is also conducting an organizational review aimed at identifying opportunities to improve efficiency and potentially increase revenue.

The model will serve as an ongoing financial management tool rather than a one-time report, allowing the district to continue monitoring revenues and expenditures annually, Corley said.

During the discussion, board members asked about the district's history of salary increases. Administrators said the most recent raise came from the state in 2022. Before that, district-funded salary increases occurred around 2008 through 2010, with additional one-time stipends approved in other years.

While the 6.8% salary increase would become part of employees' permanent pay, the incentive package would be a one-time benefit that could be modified or eliminated if financial conditions worsen in the future.

OPED Trust Fund

The committee also heard a presentation about the district's Other Post-Employment Benefits, or OPEB, trust fund and how it could help reduce long-term costs.

The fund was created in 2009 as DeSoto Parish starting seeing a boom in sales tax revenue and increase in property tax assessments after the Haynesville Shale development began the year before. It’s designed to address future retiree benefit obligations, mostly health insurance costs.

All governing bodies in the state are supposed to have similar funds for the same purposes; however, few can afford to do so. Most entities pay those expenses directly from their operating budgets each year.

Clay Stafford of Reliant, which helped establish the trust, said the DeSoto School Board has contributed nearly $70 million to the fund since 2009 and has generated more than $29 million in investment earnings. As of March, the trust held approximately $98.4 million, and Stafford said the balance had surpassed $100 million by April.

The School Board has allocated varying amounts of surplus sales tax or any excess revenue available into OPED through the years.

“We were putting in whatever we could -- a million, a hundred thousand,” Corley told KTBS. “We’ve got more in there than anybody could ever imagine in an OPED Trust. But we began to slow down contributions when the market started doing well.”

The district's most recent OPEB liability was reported at approximately $136 million, meaning the trust is now funded at roughly 72% to 75% of its total obligation, according to Stafford.

Corley emphasized to KTBS the money can’t be touched for routine expenses; it’s set up to ensure should something catastrophic happen and the district cased to exist that retired employees’ benefits, such as medical expenses and insurance, would be covered.

Stafford said at the meeting that the district's decision to begin investing a portion of the trust in equities in 2018 significantly improved returns. He said the trust has averaged a 6.8% annual return over the past three years compared with a 2.75% average since its inception.

He recommended allowing annual withdrawals of up to 2% from the trust. That will allow the school Board to offset retiree benefits that are currently paid out of the general fund.  

Stafford said the fund has reached a size where it should continue to grow even with those withdrawals.

Corley told the committee the district is not relying on the OPEB trust to fund the proposed pay raise. Instead, they view the strategy as a way to reduce long-term expenses and provide additional financial flexibility in the future.