Sharyland gives raises, takes stipends in new compensation plan
Sharyland ISD’s 2026-27 compensation plan includes a 2% raise for most employees, an equity adjustment for bus drivers and an end to annual stipends, which has some teachers worried about how they’ll make ends meet.
To offset the discontinued stipends, the district approved a one-time $1,000 payment to the affected teachers, but it still doesn’t fully restore their financial position.
The discontinuation of stipends is part of a complete overhaul to Sharyland’s staffing and compensation structure, which the district rolled out last summer ahead of the 2025-26 school year.
As part of the restructuring for the 2026-27 school year, administrative staff discovered that SISD has been spending more than $3.1 million on stipends each year. And $160,000 of those stipends were going to teachers for services they weren’t providing, specifically in math and science areas.
The district found that it has been paying 67 math and science teachers an annual $2,000-$2,500 stipend because Sharyland used to consider math and science critical needs areas. SISD originally offered the stipends as a hiring incentive, but somehow they became an annual occurrence, and continued even after some educators stopped teaching those subjects.
However, in developing the compensation plan for the upcoming school year, administration discontinued the math and science stipends because SISD no longer considers those subjects as critical needs.
“There is no reason why we should value the math teacher over the social studies teacher because there’s not a shortage of them in the state, even in our region it’s not a shortage,” Superintendent Dr. Elaine Howard said at the May 19 budget workshop.
She continued.
“From a fiscal perspective, we cannot continue to say that this content area is a critical need when it is not,” the superintendent said.
Math and science are not the only areas with discontinued, reduced or grandfathered stipends, but they’re the only subjects for which teachers publicly opposed the district’s recommendation.
The board of trustees was initially supposed to vote on the 2026-27 compensation plan at the May 26 meeting, but tabled the item for a month after two teachers asked them to reconsider during the public hearing.
“This stipend impacts my family. I have a child in college, every dollar counts,” one teacher said at the meeting. “Yesterday, I shared this [compensation plan] possibility with my husband and he told me ‘We’ll figure it out.’ But his face did not match his words. His face said what many educators silently carry — worry, sacrifice and uncertainty.”
The board and administration further discussed logistics at the final budget workshop on June 2, but they still deemed it fiscally irresponsible to continue the stipends and provide 2% raises with a balanced budget.
“My job as the CEO of this district is to align the reality of the Sharyland today with what we’re really doing, and unfortunately, the compensation structure that we’re operating under cannot be sustained,” the superintendent said at the workshop. “We really have to consider where are we putting the money when it comes to compensation. Rather than putting $3.1 million in stipends, I’d rather put $3.1 million into salaries because that’s what they take with them through [retirement], that’s what they can count on and that can’t be reduced on them.”
The trustees finally approved the 2026-27 compensation plan at the June 22 meeting, reiterating that it was a challenging but necessary decision.
“I think the spirit of this is to understand that even though we’re making difficult decisions, our goal is clear, and that’s to invest in our staff and have clear compensation, and not temporary compensation,” Trustee Maritza Venecia said.
