Technology specialists and lead custodians are among the few Longview School District employees getting pay raises this year.

The wage increases are part of a three-year contract approved last year by Longview School District and the Service Employee International Union.

Longview School Board approved the raises Monday night.

“They honored their obligation they had with us,” said Candy Hogg, a Southwest Washington representative for the Service Employee International Union 925.

The district never asked the union to forego the raises, despite a $5 million revenue shortfall this year, Hogg said, though the union considered postponing the raises if it allowed more employees to keep their jobs.

“We did look at not taking a pay increase to save some jobs but it wouldn’t have made a difference because it was just a small amount of money,” she said.

The raises give about an extra $1,000 a year to technology specialists and custodians. (Technology specialists get a 50-cent an hour raise, high school lead custodians get 20 more cents an hour and middle school custodians get 10 cents more an hour.)

The raises are not considered “cost-of-living increases,” which no one in Longview School District received this year. COLAs are allotted by the state and are calculated based on inflation, said Longview Schools spokeswoman Sandy Catt.

The district accounted for higher wages to these positions when the district drafted its budget for the coming year, she said.

“Those (raises) would not have come as a surprise because, again, that’s an agreement that was made a while ago and would be included in the budget,” Catt said.

Both positions were long overdue for raises, Hogg said.

Technology specialists haven’t had pay increases in “a good eight or nine years” and lead custodians received a small raise four years ago, she said.

The union brought these positions to the bargaining table to bring their salaries closer to the salaries earned by their peers in similarly sized school districts in Washington.

“It’s to bring employees closer to where they should be in pay,” Hogg said.

The Service Employee International Union 925 — which also represents bus drivers, teacher aides and food service staff — ratified their contract last Tuesday. The union met three times during May and June to negotiate with the district.

Longview School Board on Monday also approve a contract agreement its secretaries union. The agreement calls for secretaries on 10-, 11- and 12- month contracts to work three fewer days next year.