Abrams promises big pay raise for teachers

After watching Republican Gov. Brian Kemp deliver on a 2018 campaign promise to boost schoolteachers’ pay by $5,000, Democrat Stacey Abrams is ready to more than double it.

She would raise the minimum salary of the state’s public school teachers to $50,000 as part of a bigger plan to increase the pay for all K-12 educators by $11,000 over four years.

And Abrams plans to cover the cost — she says it would be $412 million a year — without raising taxes or imposing new fees.

Abrams, who rolled out the proposal while accepting the endorsement of the 23,000-teacher-strong Georgia Association of Educators, said the raise is necessary to retain educators and improve the state’s schools.

“When our pipeline is thinning and our exodus is increasing, we are losing the fight for our children’s future,” Abrams said.

Georgia teachers rank 35th in the nation for base pay at about $39,000 a year, according to a National Education Association study published in April. Abrams’ plan would land Georgia in the top 10.

The average salary for Georgia’s public school teachers is $60,553. An $11,000 bump in pay would allow the state to leapfrog the average salary of $65,293 for U.S. teachers.

Overall, Abrams’ proposal would cost $1.65 billion over four years.

Kemp’s team thinks she needs to go back to the classroom for some math lessons.

“Following the lead of her pals in the Biden administration, Stacey Abrams’ latest Hail Mary proposal for over $2 billion in new state spending annually joins an ever-growing pile of piein-the-sky plans that would make inflation worse and require higher taxes on Georgia families to pay for it all,” Kemp spokesman Tate Mitchell said.

Abrams spokeswoman Jaylen Black offered a peek at how the campaign thinks the numbers would work:

Based on projections, the state’s tax collections would grow about 3.5% a year, or at least $1.1 billion. That’s enough to cover both the annual cost of the raise plus the estimated price tag of $264 million required for another Abrams goal: expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Stacey Abrams