Public school teachers throughout Texas could be in line for a one-time pay bump of $5,000 if Senate Bill 3, authored by Sen. Jane Nelson (R), passes. More than 300,000 teachers would be eligible for the raise which would come at a cost to the state of approximately $3.7 billion in the first two years.

“We’re putting teachers first this session,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) said in his inauguration speech on Tuesday. “It’s been 20 years since they’ve had an across-the-board raise. We have 6 million kids in Texas school. The future of Texas depends on their education. And I don’t care how much money we spend on building or how much money we spend on a system or how many computers we have, if you don’t have that great teacher there, with that student, teaching that student, you will not have a successful outcome.”

All full-time classroom teachers would be eligible for the pay raise which is being greeted with enthusiasm on campus.

“Like most teachers, I would greatly appreciate the additional $5,000 in our salary as it will help make our paychecks more aligned with the effort and time involved in doing the job,” English teacher Carolyn Synatschk said. “In addition to having the much-appreciated additional income, it would also mean that awareness would be brought to a longstanding concern of the lower than average salary in the education field overall, which would hopefully highlight the need to make improvements in this area.”

The average teacher salary in Texas is approximately $53,000, with the starting salary at just more than $47,000. If approved, the $5,000 raise would amount to a 9.4 percent raise for the average teacher.

But not everybody on campus is counting on extra cash.

“I’m quite skeptical, at this point, of the pay raise because it’s merely a proposition at the beginning of this legislative session,” world history teacher John Sommers said. “Most likely, it is just grandstanding.”