VIENNA — In May, Gov. Mike Parson signed Senate Bill 727, an omnibus bill with many implications for both public and private elementary and secondary education in Missouri.

The bill encompasses several topics including minimum school terms, charter schools, weighted average daily attendance, the Small Schools Grant, Career Ladder, teacher pay and more. During the May 21 Maries R-1 Board of Education meeting, the board discussed what the mandated pay increase for teachers would mean for the district.

During Superintendent Teresa Messersmith’s report to the board during the meeting, she encouraged board members to read the entirety of the bill. She said she planned to focus the discussion on the teacher pay provisions because it was something that would greatly affect the school.

For the last few years, the state has provided a grant to help schools that did not pay their teachers a minimum salary of $38,000 reach the $38,000 threshold. The minimum will increase to $40,000 beginning with the 2024-25 school year. The grant will continue to fund the total difference. Messersmith said she expected the district to be fine with the increases next year.

In the 2025-26 school year, the mandatory base pay for teachers statewide will become $40,000. The mandatory minimum salary for teachers who have at least 10 years of experience and a master’s degree will rise to $46,000. Maries R-1’s base salary for the 2024-25 school year is $34,000 and $41,000 for teachers with at least 10 years of experience and a master’s degree.

Board President Dave Long asked if the $40,000 would include salary steps that the district offers to teachers who advance in their careers. Messersmith said the $40,000 is a minimum and steps will come on top of that value. She said she could not predict if the state would fund all, some or none of the difference after the 2024-25 school year.

If Maries R-1 must pay the entire salary difference, then it would be about $6,000 per person for a faculty of 38 people. Other factors contributing to an eventual increase in what the district will pay in teacher salaries include retirement and other benefits and coaching stipends. By Messersmith’s estimation, the increase will cost the district about $300,000 more in teacher salaries beginning in the 2025-26 school year.

During the 2026-27 school year, the $40,000 base will remain the same though the minimum for teachers with at least 10 years of experience and a master’s degree will increase to $47,000. Messersmith said about 20 teachers in the district meet that requirement, which would add another $20,000 in salary costs that year. Those teachers will get another $1,000 minimum increase during the 2027-2028 school year.

Beginning with the 2028-2029 school year, school districts must have at least a $40,000 base salary for teachers, a $48,000 base salary for teachers with 10 years of experience and a master’s degree and give a yearly cost of living increase to the base salary. Messersmith said she did not have an estimation of what that would cost the district.

“That’s going to be a lot,” she said.

During the report, Messersmith also shared facility updates. She said Archer-Elgin Surveying and Engineering is working on a request for proposals for some of the projects funded by the bond voters passed in April. She expected those in early June. On the day of the meeting, architects had spent about three hours at the school taking measurements and preparing for designs.

The projects the district plans to complete over the summer include new air conditioning systems in the gyms, repairs to the gym floors and replacing the cafeteria boiler. Other projects the district is planning to complete, though they may not happen over the summer, including installing a new fire alarm system, drop ceilings, exterior door replacements, tuckpointing and an elementary school restroom expansion. Messersmith said the architects were hopeful that the district could complete some of the additional projects over the summer and some of them could be done while students are in the building.

Messersmith said the district planned to spend the remaining $158,052.60 in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) money on tutoring and i-Ready math and communication arts curriculum for the next three years. About $37,000 will go toward new textbooks at both the elementary school and high school.

Leftover funds could go toward interactive flat-panel TVs for elementary school classrooms that do not have them. The i-Ready curriculum includes activities that require interactive screens.

Every classroom will receive Stop the Bleed kits over the summer. The district bought the kits using about $4,000 of the $50,000 it received from Missouri’s School Safety Grant program. The kits include tourniquets, gauze rolls, elastic bandages, scissors, towels, water, toilet paper, five-gallon buckets and emergency ladders for the classrooms that need them.

The campus will also have two emergency walls: one in the cafeteria and the other in the high school gym. The emergency walls will have automated external defibrillators, naloxone, EpiPen and eight Stop the Bleed kits in one location.

The district received $113,979.79 in Formula Classroom Trust money. Proposition C funds totaled $42,802.48. Transportation money totaled $21,068.83. The district had received its first Food and Nutrition payment for the month at $2,278.64.

The monthly electricity payment was $4,227.52.

The end of the year enrollment and attendance for the elementary school was 188 students with 93.43 percent average attendance. The middle school had 100 students enrolled with 95.10 percent average attendance. The high school had 143 students enrolled with 94.18 percent average attendance. The total enrollment for the district was 431 students with an overall 94.24 average attendance rate.

Messersmith said the district’s average attendance rate is “really good.” It meets the goal of having 90 percent of students attend school at least 90 percent of the time.

About 150 students are enrolled in summer school. The 22-day session continues through June 20.