Kathy Rollo Talks Full Day Pre-K Funding and Teacher Pay Raises
Tuesday on KFYO Mornings with Dave King and Matt Martin, the superintendent of the Lubbock ISD Kathy Rollo and the CFO of Lubbock ISD Jeff Baum joined Dave and Matt to talk about House Bill 2, Pre-kindergarten, special education, teacher raises, CTE courses, and more.
Kathy Rollo started the discussion by saying that they are keeping their eyes on what is going on in Austin right now, and that currently, the #1 legislation that they are hoping to see a bill for is one that will fund "Full Day Pre-K". Rollo explained that Lubbock ISD serves just under 28,000 students and 70% of those students live in poverty. These students who come from poorer neighborhoods hear 30 million fewer words at school than their more privileged counterparts, and so with funding for full day pre-k, they would hopefully be able to help these kids. "We call it the vocabulary gap," Rollo said, "if we can get kids in school earlier, we have more of an opportunity to bridge that gap."
Superintendent Rollo also talked about special education funding, teacher raises, and funding for CTE courses to help kids follow career paths from an earlier age. On the subject of teacher raises, Rollo talked about Senate Bill 3, which is in its early stages right now, but would give an across the board $5,000 pay raise for teachers.
"We all agree that we believe we want to pay our teachers more. We know the value of our quality teachers in the classroom and they are where the rubber meets the road."
Rollo said their only problem with the bill is that there are assistant teachers and other positions that she believes should also receive a pay raise, but wouldn't with the current plan.
Watch the full interview with Kathy Rollo and Jeff Baum in the video above.
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