Caption: Senate Majority Whip Sen. Kirk Cullimore (left) and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Evan Vickers sit with Senate leadership at media availability at the Capitol on Tuesday. Vickers is working on legislation that would increase teacher salaries and Cullimore is sponsoring a bill that would prevent email fraud. Photo by Roger V. Tuttle

Bill to increase teaching salaries passes in the Senate

The Senate unanimously passed SB183 on Tuesday that will increase teacher salaries. Educator Salary Amendments, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Sen. Evan Vickers and several co-sponsors, appropriates funding and ties teacher salary supplement and educator salary adjustments raises to increase yearly with the WPU Value instead of remaining stagnant.

SB183 is a companion bill to HB215 that was passed by the legislature earlier in the session. It directly increased teacher compensation by about $6,000 but the pay raises currently do not adjust for inflation or when the WPU Value increases. 

“SB183 will have a positive, long-lasting impact on teachers by enabling the pay raises in HB215 to increase automatically,” Vickers said. “In the legislature, education is our priority. Teachers across our great state do a fantastic job educating children and I want them to feel our deep appreciation for their dedicated work.”

SB183 will also change how a negative teacher evaluation affects their eligibility for the program. Teachers will all be eligible unless they have received three unsatisfactory ratings. Currently, only one unsatisfactory rating is required for ineligibility.

“Teachers are the backbone of education,” said co-sponsor Sen. Kathleen Riebe. “I am excited about this piece of legislation and the support it shows to the education community. With increased pay, we will be able to retain and encourage more teachers in years to come.”

SB183 will now move to the House for consideration. If it passes the legislature it will take effect on July 1, 2023.

Formal recourse for email fraud

A bill that would prevent email fraud is making its way through the Senate. SB 225, Commercial Email Act, sponsored by Senate Majority Whip Sen. Kirk Cullimore, “prohibits an advertiser or a person initiating an email from sending unauthorized or misleading commercial emails from this state or to an email address within this state; creates a cause of action for the Office of the Attorney General, the electronic mail service provider, the recipient of the unsolicited commercial email, and any person whose brand, trademark, email address, or domain name is used without permission to recover damages related to unauthorized or misleading commercial emails.”

“I’ve been working on this for three years,” said Cullimore. “I’m trying to prevent more spam and fraud. I know of a woman in the PTA whose email was hacked and they impersonated her and solicited donations through a Venmo account. It looked like her and the scammer absconded with all the money.”

There are scam companies out there who prey on people, especially older adults, he said. “This bill will give them a private right to action to file a complaint. In the case of the woman in the PTA the scammer had intimate knowledge about her. There is a formal recourse for that.”