CAVE CITY — Employees of the Caverna Independent School District will be receiving a pay increase slightly higher than what was mandated by the state.

The Kentucky General Assembly is requiring school districts statewide to give school district personnel, classified and certified, a 1 percent pay increase, even though it is an unfunded mandate.

Officials with the Caverna Independent School System, however, gave employees a 2 percent pay increase, despite the money coming from local funds.

“We really pushed everybody to get everything in toward the end of this month to see what we could do, to see if we could go above and beyond that,” said Sam Dick, superintendent.

Offering salaries that rival those paid by surrounding districts is something the school district has tried to do since Dick was named superintendent five years ago.

“We made a commitment,” Dick said. “That was one the things I wanted to do when I was hired, to make our salaries competitive and try to get us to the top of that scale in this area.”

Surrounding school districts, Glasgow, Barren and Metcalfe, only gave employees in their districts the 1 percent state mandated increase, plus step and rank increases where applicable.

“We still do not have a firm budget from KDE, it is hard to even consider more until we see our actual allocations from the state. For the past two years, Metcalfe County’s Board of Education has provided slightly more than the state-mandated 1 percent for Rank I and Rank II teachers,” said Pat Hurt, superintendent for Metcalfe County schools. “Due to the delayed budget figures, however, we were unable to consider continuing increases that would exceed the state’s mandate for 2009-10.”

Caverna officials believe a higher salary makes the district more attractive to those seeking jobs within the school district.

Barry Nesbitt, who has been principal of Caverna Middle School for four years, agreed that offering a higher salary has improved employee recruitment.

“From the time I got here until now, if you had a job opening in your building you may have had 10 people to apply,” he said. “Now you may have 50 to 60.”

The salary increase includes step increases, as well as an adjustment in pay for Rank I teachers.

“Rank I over two years had gotten out of whack. Some teachers were only getting a $50 raise. I adjusted those back to where they were supposed to be,” said Penny Boeckmann, district finance director.

Wayne Hatcher, board chairman, said that was something that needed to be done.

“In all other areas, we are in really good shape,” he said. “That was just a small adjustment.”

Teachers are paid according to the amount of education they have received and how many years of experience they have.

With the 2 percent pay increase, a Rank I teacher at Caverna with five years of experience will earn $49,841 for the 2009-10 school year. A teacher with a Rank I who has 27 years of experience will earn $60,983 for the upcoming school year, according to the district’s salary schedule.

Boeckmann compared Caverna’s salaries with those paid by Oldham and Jefferson County school districts.

“In most cases we’re higher than Oldham County. Jefferson County does theirs a little bit different. They do a Rank III and then a Rank III plus 15 hours,” she said.

Oldham County also gave its employees more than the state-mandated 1 percent pay increase.

“We added an additional 1/2 percent. The annual step increase is 1.6 percent. With all of that we normally say that our average teacher increase for the 2009-10 school year was 3.1 percent,” said Rebecca Desensi, communications director for the school district.

An Oldham County teacher with a Rank I who has five years of experience will earn $47,194, while a teacher with a Rank I with 27 years of experience will earn $63,052.

Jefferson County gave its classified and certified personnel a 1 percent pay increase, according to Diana Decker with the district’s human resource’s department.

According to the district’s 2009-10 salary schedule, a Jefferson County teacher with a Rank I and five years of experience will earn $51,342, while a Rank I teacher with 25 years of experience will earn more than $73,000.

The average teacher salary in Kentucky is $46,417, according to Kentucky Education Facts on the Kentucky Department of Education’s Web site.

Hatcher called the proposed pay increase reasonable and said he felt it was something the district could afford to do.