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Isle of Wight County’s School Board, on Dec. 12, approved a $5-per-day increase in the minimum base pay for its lowest-paid substitute teachers.

In 2023, the School Board approved a new pay scale for substitutes that opened the job to candidates without college coursework. Prior to that year, Isle of Wight County Schools had required at least 60 college credits or an associate’s degree, though state law only mandates that substitutes hold a high school diploma or GED and have either two years of full-time postsecondary education or two years of work experience with children.

Currently the division pays full-day substitutes with a high school diploma and fewer than 60 college credits $90 per day. Effective Jan. 1, that figure will rise to $95.

The $100 per day rate paid to substitutes with at least 60 college credits or an associates degree remains unchanged, as does the $115 per day rate paid to substitutes with a bachelor’s or master’s degree, and the $135 per day paid to substitutes who hold a current Virginia teaching license.

Isle of Wight uses ESS Northeast LLC, a school staffing agency, to manage its substitute teacher program.

The $5-per-day raise for substitutes with only a high school diploma, according to Human Resources Director Laura Sullivan, is needed to keep pace with an increase in Virginia’s minimum wage that will take effect Jan. 1.

According to Virginia’s Department of Labor and Industry, in 2020 the General Assembly passed an escalating minimum wage law that raised the minimum wage to $12 per hour effective Jan. 1, 2024, and mandated that the rate increase annually in accordance with the change in the consumer price index for urban consumers, or CPI-U, which the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics defines as a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers.

In 2023, the BLS published a CPI-U of 3.4%, which under the 2020 law will increase the minimum wage to $12.41 effective Jan. 1.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed legislation earlier this year that would have raised the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour.