Kansas City Public Schools teachers will receive a 5% base salary raise after the school board approved a new collective bargaining agreement with the Kansas City Federation of Teachers, the district’s teachers union. 

Superintendent Jennifer Collier called the raise “historic.” 

“This is the highest pay increase for KCPS teachers in recent memory and brings our starting teacher salary to a competitive $50,558 annually, maintaining our position as one of the highest-paying school districts for teachers in our region,” she said. “This reflects our commitment to attracting, retaining and supporting exceptional educators.”

The board also approved 5% raises for classified and child nutrition staff even though it wasn’t their normal time to negotiate. 

Carter Taylor, an elementary teacher and legislative chair for the local union, said the raises feel like a “massive win” in the current climate of threats to school funding from the local, state and federal levels. 

“It did feel a bit like a miracle, just because it feels so difficult to ask for anything, especially knowing all the economic uncertainty, knowing all the different cuts that are being thrown our way,” Taylor said. 

Like other Jackson County districts, KCPS faces loss of revenue from local property tax credits, a state budget that doesn’t fully fund the K-12 foundation formula and uncertainty at the federal level. 

On June 10, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation for the 12 months ending in May was 4.2%. Inflation affects both schools’ expenses and how far teachers’ salaries stretch. 

Taylor said there was a sense of agreement between the union and the district that teachers needed more support. The new pay agreements affect more than 1,000 teachers and hundreds of classified and nutritional services staff members.

“Nobody disagreed that there needed to be more resources, and there needed to be more pay,” Taylor said. “It was just a matter of actually finding a number we could agree on.”

The agreement lasts until July 1, 2029, but it specifies that the union can return to negotiate salary increases annually. 

“With the speed at which the financial situation changes, it’s going to be important that we’re there to back up our teachers and that we’re not bound by a contract that was out of date six months earlier,” Taylor said. 

What’s included in the agreement 

Among other changes, the district agreed to share more information with the union, including about contractors and about noncertified staff filling certified positions. The new agreement also contains many clarifications and small changes. 

For example, it describes teachers’ responsibilities for remote learning days and how compensation for extra duties works in more detail. 

Under the agreement, the base salary for a teacher with only a bachelor’s degree will go up 5%, from $48,150 to a bit more than $50,558. 

“It will probably put us near, if not leading, districts in our region on the Missouri side,” said Charnissa Holliday-Scott, the KCPS chief human resources officer who presented the agreement to the board. “When budget and finance gave us the OK that we can do it, it is very exciting for us to do.”

That increase to the base also bumps up the salaries for teachers with more experience or education. 

For example, a highly educated beginning teacher could earn close to $53,000 while a very experienced teacher with only a bachelor’s degree could earn nearly $69,000. A teacher with the maximum experience and education accounted for on the chart would earn about $99,000. 

Resource teachers, librarians and counselors are included in the certified staff agreement but have separate salary schedules. They earn more but also work more days. 

According to a fiscal impact document, the salary and benefits for certified staff — such as teachers, counselors and librarians — will cost KCPS an estimated additional $5.6 million compared to the 2025-26 salary schedule. The document says KCPS had 1,138 full-time-equivalent certified staff, including more than 1,000 teachers, as of June 4. 

Overall, KCPS is projected to spend more than $110 million on certified staff salaries and benefits for the upcoming school year.

“Our teachers are the foundation of student success — as we just talked about when we saw the academic presentation — and it’s important that their compensation reflects that value, their expertise and the dedication that they bring to our classrooms,” Collier said. 

She also noted that the district will be increasing certain stipends, “including those allocated for our longest-serving staff members,” and that noncertified staff members will also see a 5% increase to their base pay. 

The district also anticipates spending about $53.9 million — about $2.8 million more than the previous year — on salaries and benefits for 730 classified staff members such as paraprofessionals, interpreters, school nurses, secretaries and security staff. 

Many of those positions are paid hourly, ranging from a beginning rate of $17.12 for Head Start teaching assistants with the lowest level of education to $44.57 for a lead interpreter. Other roles, including for some health professionals, are salaried. 

Finally, the district estimates it will spend about $600,000 extra on salaries and benefits to increase the base salary for child nutritional services workers by 5%. 

Pay rates for cafeteria managers will start between $21.16 per hour and $24.68 per hour depending on the size of the school.  

Teacher and board member response to pay increase

The board unanimously approved the changes, but member Jamekia Kendrix asked for future monitoring. 

“Part of the goal (of the agreement) is to help to improve the staff experience and retention, and to ultimately impact student outcomes,” she said. “As we make these changes, what evidence is the administration monitoring to determine whether or not the changes that we made were successful in moving us closer towards those ends?”

Holliday-Scott said the district would continue surveying staff, monitoring student achievement and tracking staff attendance. 

Board member Josh Jackaway said he was excited by the changes. 

“I do think that that’s going to have a huge impact on our ability to attract and retain the very best educators,” he said, “and that’s going to lead to those increased results in our students.”

Taylor partially attributes the gains in the agreement to teachers telling their stories. 

“We had a very clear and dedicated push this year to actually be out in the public and talking about the issues that we were dealing with,” she said. “There were a lot of community groups and members of the media who were willing… to tell our stories and discuss what it’s actually like in a way that we haven’t been able to do before.” 

One example was The Beacon’s story on efforts to turn the Bryant School into workforce housing for teachers, Taylor said. 

“The biggest takeaway people took from that, when you go into the comments on social media and look at it, was, ‘Hey, why don’t we just pay teachers more?’” she said. 

Threats to public education, while creating a difficult environment, have also bonded the union and district officials, Taylor said. 

“It’s not union versus district right now,” she said. “It’s us versus everything that’s coming our way. Attacks on education have not stopped. If anything, they’ve gotten louder and more pervasive.” 

Taylor said there is more work to be done to support teachers, but that the raises make a real difference in their lives.

In 2024, the Economic Policy Institute found that the pay gap between public school teachers and other college graduates had hit a record high. 

“This isn’t like it’s trying to make us live large, it’s more like it’s closer to breaking even,” Taylor said. “I think that we still need a lot more because we were already so desperately underpaid, but this gets me closer to being able to actually get my head above water.”