Wichita Falls ISD board approves multi‑year pay plan, budget amendments and several technology and maintenance purchases

Wichita Falls ISD’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to approve an administrative recommendation to raise the district’s pay scales and adopt budget amendments that administrators said bring the district into balance for the 2024–25 fiscal year.

Administrators told the board the pay plan, implemented in phases, would set teacher starting pay at $51,000 and make other midpoint adjustments recommended by a CASB/TASB comparison. “Starting the teacher pay at $51,000 actually gets us above what has to be recommended,” the compensation presenter said during the board discussion. The plan is structured as a multi‑year implementation: certain early career bands receive the larger initial increases, years 3–4 receive $2,500 and teachers in year 5 and beyond receive a $5,000 step the presenter said had originally been awarded by the state and is being extended districtwide by the district administration.

Board members asked whether increases are recurring and whether long‑service teachers should expect further step increases; staff clarified the phased nature of the plan and that some state awards were being applied more broadly by the district. Trustees discussed competitiveness and recruitment, with staff noting about two dozen vacancies in some hourly and paraprofessional positions and that the increases include both percentage midpoint raises and small hourly increments for aides and clerical personnel.

The board also approved budget amendments that administrators said reflect changes in general operating revenues and expenditures and move certain funds between functions to keep the fiscal year balanced. The presenter said the district had identified and closed a roughly $1.1 million deficit and is mid‑audit; the motion to adopt the budget amendments passed 7–0.

Several consent items accompanied the financial approvals. The board approved multi‑year and large purchases the administration described as budgeted technology and maintenance expenditures: a 63‑terabyte Pure Storage flash array for $162,037.60, five maintenance vans totaling $207,125, a Content Keeper web‑filtering solution for $112,822.10, and the purchase of 582 Chromebooks, cases and licenses for $239,807.28 using federal carryforward funds. The district also placed on consent the award of a two‑year trades/job order contract RFP and the renewal of Google Workspace licenses for CareerTech.

On a separate procurement topic, the board approved renewing the county tax collection contract; staff said the proposed annual fee would increase to $117,500 from prior years’ amounts (comments in the meeting noted the increase from prior years). Administrators said the tax collection fee will be paid from budgeted funds.

Next steps: staff will implement the pay plan, execute the approved purchase contracts and proceed with procurement and vendor onboarding. The board’s votes on these items were unanimous (7–0).