GROVES — Trustees with Port Neches-Groves Independent School District are looking to keep teacher pay competitive while compensating all employees as the district works on the 2016-2017 fiscal year budget.

Sheri Drawhorn, business manager, presented the board earlier this week with five scenarios for raises ranging from a step raise for teachers/zero percent for all others and a 3 percent raise for teachers/all others to a step raise in addition to a percentage raise.

Trustee Lana Parker was the one who suggested the plan that would eventually be unanimously adopted by the board — an $1,800 salary increase to teachers and a 3 percent raise to all employees.

“Last year we thought we were doing a good job, then they (Nederland Independent School District) did 4 percent,” Parker said during discussion of the issue. “Eighteen hundred would help newer teachers.”

Salary schedules comparing NISD and PN-GISD show starting teacher pay in Nederland in 2015-2016 school year is $686 more than PN-G’s and a teacher with one year experience in Nederland made $1,424 more than PN-G.

In fact, NISD teacher pay topped PN-G’s from year zero through year 18 in 2015-2016, according to the pay schedule.

From there, teachers with more than two decades of service on up to 33 years in PN-G saw between $1,000 to $3,000 more than their counterparts.

In addition to the $1,800, teachers will also receive a $200 holiday bonus making for a $2,000 total increase.

But 39 teachers at the higher end of the salary scale will see slightly less than a 3 percent raise — 2.8 percent.

“The biggest number of teachers are those with zero to 15 years of service,” Mike Gonzales, assistant superintendent, said.

The newly adopted pay plan comes at a cost — $800,000, of the 2016-017 fiscal year budget.

The district is currently looking at a budget with $39.9 million in revenues and $42.6 million in expenditures for a $2.7 million deficit.

Also during the meeting trustees adopted a tax rate of 1.4441 per $100 valuation. A budget and tax rate hearing is scheduled for 7 p.m. Aug. 29.