Education

Keep up with Columbia public schools

Below the overview of the district are links to KBIA's coverage of Columbia 93 district schools, updated as more stories are published. Columbia 93 at a glanceThe Columbia 93 school district currently includes 32 different schools. In 2014, the district had a k-12 enrollment of 17,204 students, which is 2% of the total k-12 enrollment for the state. Enrollment has been slightly increasing in recent years, 2% since 2011. While a small percent, that amounts to almost 400 more students. There have also been major re-drawing of attendance areas with the addition of Battle High School. Middle school attendance areas shape high school boundaries 00000178-cc7d-da8b-a77d-ec7d2f9e0000The changes have affected all schools in the district, including causing high school attendance to increase and overcrowding at one middle school at least.

Columbia school board shoots down teacher pay raise reinstatement

KBIA | By Kyle Norris

Published May 12, 2015 at 3:00 PM CDT

The Columbia Public Schools Board of Education unanimously rejected reinstating a pay step increase for teachers that taught in the district during the 2008-2009 school year.

Because of the missed pay step, teachers hired since that time have a higher pay scale than these longer serving teachers. School Board President James Whitt said the district is in deficit spending, and is not in the financial shape necessary to reinstate the pay increase.

“Teacher compensation is a priority for us,” Whitt said. “Every year, we value teachers. We value the compensation that we’re paying them.”

Columbia Missouri National Educators Association President Susan McClintic was not happy with the board’s decision.

“It’s a small amount of money,” McClintic said. “It certainly would’ve been a great deal of good will.”

Whitt did not rule out the possibility of reinstating the increase, but McClintic said it is low on the school board’s priority list.

“(The school board) continues to go on and hope to ignore that and go away,” McClintic said.

Because of the district’s budget woes, Whitt said the school board is working on ideas to help alleviate the budget shortfall. They plan to have a public forum to discuss the board’s ideas later this year.