MCALLEN – A Rio Grande Valley school district is making changes to try to stay competitive.

That means raises for teachers.

These raises come after a state bill passed giving school districts more money.

McAllen Independent School District board members disagreed about how to increase salaries.

After nearly two hours, trustees reached an agreement.

Increases were initially proposed for employees but at different rates.

Trustee Debbie Aliseda said the raises should grow with the teacher's years of experience instead of giving everyone equal raises.

She proposed lowering the percentage administrators were set to receive.

Other board members proposed compromising to let administrators keep the proposed raise and to compensate teachers according to their experience.

Aliseda believes this will help retain teachers in the district.

"When they become 20 years they leave because they want to retire at 25 years, but they don't want to retire at our low salary. So, they go to a surrounding school district, and they get a higher pay raise and they can retire at a higher salary. They're single parents, widowers, and I just thought we can't continue to bleed our own system based on our pay schedule," says Aliseda.

Union president and 19 year educator Sylvia Tagumo was happy with the outcome.

She says it was important to raise salaries for starting teachers, too.

"So actually, it's attracting these new teachers and retaining them for the long run so that they have the knowledge, expertise and values that we want," explained Tagumo.

House Bill 3 granted similar funding to other districts.

It's not only meant to increase salaries.

The complex bill over 300 pages long is also changing things such as FAFSA, bilingual education and pre-k.