Texas district adopts $11 minimum wage

Katy Independent School District will raise its minimum wage to $11, reports the Community Impact Newspaper.

The new wage will increase the starting pay for the district’s staff, including foodservice workers, bus attendants and custodians.

“We have found that it is very difficult for us to recruit and maintain a high-quality workforce in those areas with our starting rates,” Yolanda Edmond, assistant superintendent for KISD human resources, told the newspaper.

The policy change comes amid a national stir over hourly wages.

Recently, the first phase of a minimum wage hike went into effect Oct. 1 at University of California campuses for staff and contract employees, while Denver Public Schools announced that it, too, would raise the minimum wage for its employees, to $12 an hour.

Though the University of Washington in Seattle recently elected to raise its minimum wage to $15, student-employees at the university’s Tacoma campus are ambivalent about doing the same, citing concerns that it would reduce hours or student jobs, FoodService Director recently reported.

Read the Katy ISD’s full story via the Community Impact Newspaper.