LEANDER, Texas (KXAN) — After years of struggling to fully staff classrooms, cafeterias, and extracurriculars, staffing at Leander ISD is the best it’s been in years.
Superintendent Dr. Bruce Gearing attributes the improvement in part to a 2.5 percent pay raise of midpoint for all teachers and staff that will be reflected on their first paycheck of the school year.
As a result, the starting salary jumped to $56,995, with all teachers receiving an extra $1,540 per year.
Gearing talked with KXAN about the pay raises, vouchers for private school tuition, and his message to families as a new school year kicks off.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Tom Miller: I want to start with teacher pay raises. Leander ISD gave its teachers a 2.5 percent pay raise. How do you hope that’s going to help out with teacher recruitment and retainment?
Dr. Bruce Gearing: We’re very grateful to our board for balancing a difficult situation where the state did not give us any additional funding this last session. Looking internally and saying, ‘you know, we really do value our educators, and how do we do that the best way possible?’ So they did give a two and a half percent on the midpoint pay raise across the board for all of our employees. I think that’s important because it’s not just about teachers, it’s really about all of our support educators in the system. They also baked into that a one-time payment that will come in December for all of our employees – $1,000 for full-time employees and $500 for part-time employees. That also goes a long way to trying to make sure that our employees feel valued for the work that they do.
Tom: Where do things stand in terms of your staffing levels, and are you happy and confident with where they’re at?
Dr. Gearing: This is the best shape we’ve been in in several years. We are mostly fully staffed at all of our sites with very few exceptions. Certainly in much better shape than we were last year, and definitely than the year before that. We feel thrilled with the folks that we’ve managed to recruit to come to be part of the Leander ISD family. We really feel like they match our culture, and they’re they’re ready to empower learning in each and every one of our students.
Tom: I want to ask you about some politics playing out at the state level. Governor Abbott has said that school vouchers for private schools are one of his top priorities as a public school superintendent, where do you stand on that?
Dr. Gearing: As public schools, we educate any child and any family who lives within our boundaries and wants to come to our schools. I do believe in school choice. I do believe that parents should have the ability to choose the education that they want for their children, but that choice exists already. What I don’t support is public taxpayer dollars going to support private institutions for that choice, so I am fully opposed to voucher systems in public education.
Tom: You joined the district in 2019. You’ve been here for five years. What have you learned over that time that informs how you lead?
Dr. Gearing: What I’ve learned is that there is an incredible power of the past in Leander. Tom Glenn was superintendent for 20 years. Brett champion was superintendent for 10 years. They developed this incredible culture of continuous improvement, this incredible culture of excellence in Leander ISD for children, for staff, and in every aspect of what we do. So we’re excellent in academics, and we’ve proved that at the national level, but we’re also excellent in fine arts and athletics, career and technical education, and that is what I’ve learned is the legacy of Leander ISD. We believe in each and every child, in empowering their learning and connecting them to their interests, developing their passions, and unleashing their genius.
Tom: The most recent Texas Education Agency report card gave the district a B, relatively high marks across the board for you. Where are the areas that you still want to improve within the district?
Dr. Gearing: I believe in accountability. I think we should set goals for ourselves and hold ourselves accountable to those goals, but I believe it’s more than just standardized testing goals. I believe it is the development of the whole child. What we did is we said, ‘what does our community really want us to do?’ So at the beginning of the five years that I have been here, we went out to our community and we asked them, ‘what are the hopes and dreams that you have for your children?’ Then we took that information and we developed our vision and our mission, and we developed the goals of our strategic plan, and now we have a way of reporting back to our community on those hopes and dreams. That is in the form of the community-based accountability system that we have. The report is about to come out again in September, and that will be the third time that we’re bringing this report to back to our community to say, ‘here’s how we’re helping your children to meet the hopes and dreams that you have for them.’
Tom: As Leander ISD kicks off another school year, what do you want families to know about their child’s experience and the direction of the district?
Dr. Gearing: We want them to know that they’re bringing their most precious resource to us every single day, and our job is to make sure that we return them in the evening a little better than they were when they got here in the morning. We love their children. We care about them very deeply. We want to unleash the potential of each and every one of our students.