Houston ISD teachers confused and in some cases upset by receiving compensation letters from the district before a teacher compensation manual came out, stand to be relieved in some senses but not in others by the district’s explanation.
The letters – 8,558 of them — started going out on June 18 in order to give employees more time to consider what was being offered, an HISD spokesman said Wednesday. Teachers have until June 30 to resign from the district without penalty. There were 69 letters that were withheld for further study and those will be distributed by the end of this week, he said.
The amounts specified in the letters are the lowest the teacher could possibly be paid, the spokesman said. “With nothing added on, this was your base pay,” an HISD spokesman said. Any additional amounts would be based on positive evaluations the teachers received during the 2024-25 year, he said.
“They will be receiving an adjusted letter before the start of school [August 12, 2025],” the spokesman said. Some teachers have complained that they wish they’d known this from the original letter.
But what about the up to $5,000 in raises for public school teachers the Texas Legislature approved in the last session? While the Legislature may have set up a template based upon years of service, HISD doesn’t have to follow that, and, in fact, will not.
The state called for $2,500 going to teachers with three to four years experience and $5,000 to those with at least five years experience in larger school districts.
But because HISD is an Enhanced district it can take advantage of the Teacher Incentive Allotment it can set its own rules. The same individual evaluations made during this past school year will determine how much of a raise HISD teachers get in the next, the spokesman said.
“The adjusted compensation level will be based on effectiveness and it won’t be based on tenure,” he said.
All money approved by the Legislature for compensation is going into compensating HISD teachers, the spokesman said.
The 2025-26 teacher compensation manual is still pending.
