SALT LAKE CITY — Utah teachers will get a $1,446 direct pay raise and school support staff will get $1,000 bonuses from the Utah State Legislature and Governor Spencer Cox under a funding initiative announced Friday.
The $50 million salary boost was announced at a news conference on Utah's Capitol Hill, ahead of Friday night's unveiling of the multi-billion dollar state budget. Lawmakers packed the Gold Room to hear the announcement.
"Utah is good because her teachers are great. You represent the very best of our state," said Gov. Cox.
Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, praised "rockstar teachers" who "deal with the largest classroom sizes with the best outcomes anywhere in the nation."
"We need to congratulate our teachers," he said.
House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, pushed back on "a narrative out there being pushed a small group of people."
"That narrative is the legislature doesn’t like our teachers and we don’t value education. That is simply not true. I want to set the record straight on that," he told reporters.
The announcement comes at a time when the legislature and governor are at odds with teachers unions following a bill stripping public employee unions of collective bargaining rights. The unions have threatened a citizen referendum on the new law.
In the back of the Gold Room for Friday's announcement? Members of teachers unions.
"I think this is an effort on their part to stop it," Mike Harman, the president of the Salt Lake Education Association, told FOX 13 News of the referendum. "But I don’t think that will be the case."
Christy Giblon, a teacher in the Provo School District and president of the Provo Education Association, said she did appreciate the salary boost.
"We do appreciate the governor and the legislature are willing to increase teacher salaries. We thank them for that," she told FOX 13 News. "We don’t want them to get the message that we’re ungrateful. However, we think that this is a response to teachers being unhappy because of the things they do that do not support us and the legislators they passed that says they don’t trust educators."
The Utah Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, was also critical.
"The assertions made by Utah’s leadership are nothing more than political posturing that ignores the reality facing Utah’s public schools. While a salary increase is an important recognition of the education profession, Utah’s public schools remain underfunded, classrooms are overcrowded, and educators are struggling under the weight of unsustainable workloads," the union said in a statement.
The governor insisted to FOX 13 News he was not trying to thwart a referendum with the salary hike.
"Ultimately if there is a referendum, the people of the state of Utah will get to decide if that’s a good thing or not. But what I can tell you, this is the right thing to do no matter what’s happening outside of this," he said.
Speaker Schultz insisted that the legislature has made teacher salaries and funding education a top priority and Utah has climbed in rankings for education funding. He noted salaries for teachers now start around $60,000.
"This will absolutely help," said Rep. Doug Welton, R-Payson, a high school teacher in his day job. "When I came up to the legislature, I was concerned about some of the funding and the bills regarding education. What I found since I came up here, the legislature has done a tremendous amount of good in leading out in extra pay, teacher supplies."
