H.3513 proposes a permanent salary increase of 5% for any and all school district employees earning less than $25,000, or its hourly equivalent. This would affect positions such as crossing guard, maintenance assistants, office assistants, etc…
The proposal in this resolution is subject to funding by the General Assembly.
This proposal is just one of many recent attempts to mandate increases in pay for school employees. As we have said before the issue with these proposals is that they would do little to nothing to improve education and academic achievement (the purpose of schooling). Even if higher pay attracted better teachers and administrators South Carolina’s public schools would still be forced to implement a curriculum based on restrictive state and federal standards. This was true under Common Core and it’s true under the new “college and career ready” standards which must be similar to common core to qualify South Carolina for federal education funds. True education reform means encouraging innovation not just increasing funding to the current system.