SUMNER COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — Sumner County is moving forward on a plan to increase the starting pay for new teachers.
The district’s school board recently approved raising the base salary for new teachers by $2,700, regardless of their experience.
The pay increase means a first-year teacher would start with a salary of just over $50,000. In comparison, Metro schools start first-year, salaried teachers at just over $52,000.
Across Middle Tennessee school districts, Williamson County Schools pay their teachers the most at $56,000 per year.
“Every teacher deserves to be comparably paid to other professions in the area, and that’s going to be an ongoing push of ours,” said Scott Langford, Sumner County Director of Schools.
The district said this should allow for a boost in recruitment within their narrow hiring window.
“We have somewhere around 275 to 300 new teachers a year with retirements and corporate moves, [etc.]. We’re in a massive teacher shortage nationwide, so having the opportunity to jump ahead and recruit during the window of March and April, [it allows us] to get the very best teachers,” said Langford.
According to Langford, pay raises for teachers will likely become an annual goal for their district, especially as state law requires the minimum teacher salary to be $50,000 by 2026.
“We want to be in a position to go higher than that, because if the rest of the state is at 50, we need to be at that 53 to 55 [thousand] range,” he explained. “And that’s ultimately going to be our goal, is to stay up in the top two or three [for salaries in Middle Tennessee].”
In 2024, disagreements over the budget between the district and county commission led to a delay in approving district funds for this current school year.
Langford told News 2 that he does not foresee that happening again.
“I anticipate a pretty quick and clean budget process. I think we’re all in a good place this year,” he added.
The proposed pay raise will go up for vote by the Sumner County Commission in June, according to Langford.
