Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools considers raising minimum wage to $20 per hour
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools leaders want to increase pay for all staff to at least $20 per hour before the end of this school year.
The district conducted a compensation study in fall 2023 for classified employees, which includes roles such as bus drivers, custodians, child nutrition workers and teaching assistants. The results were presented to the CMS board of education Tuesday night.
“The minute I stepped into this role, the number one concern I heard from employees was in regard to their compensation,” Superintendent Crystal Hill told the board. “You can do all of the things and use all of the strategies, but unless you are able to keep and find the very best employees, it will be impossible to achieve our herculean goals.”
Increasing the pay of the district’s lowest paid employees — it would cost an estimated $25.66 million — is the first phase of implementing the study, said CMS Chief Financial Officer Kelly Kluttz. Currently, 3,866 CMS employees earn less than $20 per hour.
The recommendation includes the pay increase being retroactive to July 1, 2024.
Initial findings from the study were built into the budget approved by the board of education and Mecklenburg County Commissioners in May, including $13.2 million for the first phase.
“There are other funding sources being used to support this as well, including our school nutrition fund and after school fund,” Kluttz said Tuesday.
In short, some state and federal funds would be repurposed to implement the plan, so it would not require a tax increase or further approval from county commissioners beyond the $13.2 million they’ve already allocated.
While salaries for similar roles in the region are rising, salaries for those roles in CMS have remained relatively stagnant in recent years, making it difficult for the district to recruit and retain staff, the study found. CMS said in a news release its goal is to “establish a competitive pay framework that ensures employees are neither underpaid nor overpaid, fostering equity and market competitiveness.”
CMS leaders presented a plan to County Commissioners last year that aimed to bring its minimum hourly rate up to $17.25 with an additional bonus to effectively reach an hourly rate of $20 per hour. However, several commissioners and CMS board members urged them to get the minimum hourly wage to $20, in order to help workers earn closer to a living wage. The state currently has a minimum wage of $15 per hour for public school employees.
In Mecklenburg County, the living wage, or the estimated amount full-time workers must earn to live above the federal poverty level, sits at about $24.36 an hour for a single, childless adult, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator.
“If I drive two hours east of here, that number would be $18 an hour, so you’ve got dynamics in Charlotte that are different than other parts of the state,” said Ricky Lopes, a consultant for Hurd, Isenhour and Lopes, the firm that did the compensation study for CMS. “It’s more expensive in Charlotte than anywhere else.”
With the new salary scale, no employee, including certified teachers, will receive a salary decrease, Kluttz said.
Compensation for certified teachers was not included in the study, as their salaries are set by the state, with additional supplements added by the county.
The board is expected to vote at its Jan. 28 meeting, and if approved, implementation of the first phase of the district’s new salary schedules will begin in February.
District leaders also recommended increasing salaries according to years of service as well as building in annual adjustments, but the board will not vote on those measures until 2025-26 and 2026-27, respectively. The full implementation of all three phases of salary increases will take at least three years due to funding limitations.
This would be the first compensation study with its findings implemented in CMS since 2007. A study was conducted during the 2018-19 school year, but it was not funded or implemented.
