Updated on Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019 at noon with information about average teacher salaries in Texas and on Tuesday at 4:20 p.m. with comments from Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa.

AUSTIN — The Texas Senate wants to give every classroom teacher a $5,000 pay raise.

On Tuesday, Sen. Jane Nelson filed a bill that would require school districts to give each of the state's 350,000 classroom teachers a one-time pay bump. The state would pay for the increase, which would cost about $3.7 billion in the first two years, Nelson

and then would continue to have that money available for future raises,

according to Senate Bill 3

.

"The most important investment we can make in education is in our teachers. They are the key factor in preparing our students for success," said Nelson, R-Flower Mound. "Teaching has always been a labor of love, but we need to elevate the profession, recruit the best and brightest to the classrooms, and compensate our teachers for the critical role they play in shaping the future of Texas."

Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker of the Texas House Dennis Bonnen have all said public school funding will be a top priority this year. Patrick, who presides over the Senate, applauded the bill during his inauguration speech Tuesday.

“We’re putting teachers first this session. It’s been 20 years since they’ve had an across-the-board raise," Patrick said. "We have 6 million kids in Texas in school. The future of Texas depends on their education. And I don’t care how much money we spend on a 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.”

Patrick has advocated for teacher pay raises in the past but without an infusion of extra state cash. In 2017, he called for school districts to find the money for a $1,000 teacher pay bump, an ask that was unpopular with local leaders and teacher groups. That proposal never took off.

This year, he also supports more cash to help districts give merit-based pay increases, a proposal that's key to the governor's school finance plan and based, in part, on what Dallas ISD is doing.

The pay raise would be "the first step," Patrick said Tuesday, "along with other programs for schools that we're going to fund so that they can create incentive programs, extra programs for teachers to make money."

The average teacher salary in Texas is about $53,000, with the average starting salary at just more than $47,000. Dallas ISD teachers make just less than $57,000 on average. A $5,000 raise, if approved, would amount to a 9.4 percent raise for the average teacher.

Later Tuesday, Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa reiterated his support for incentive-based pay programs but said across-the-board raises shouldn't derail the negotiating process.

"We think if you differentiate for performance, you have better outcomes," Hinojosa said. "I don't think [across-the-board raises are] a poison pill, but I think it's a negotiating ploy. You have to make the lieutenant governor happy. He has to have something, but thank goodness he's not going to be asking for a bathroom bill."

Monty Exter, a lobbyist with the state's largest educator group, had one word to describe how he felt about the proposal: "Happy."

"We are pleased to see that the Texas Senate has both heard the outcry for the need for more teacher funding and seems to have listened to concerns of unfunded mandates from last session," said Exter, whose Association of Texas Professional Educators boasts 100,000 members statewide.

The bill's low number indicates it will be a priority in the Senate. All full-time classroom teachers would be eligible for the pay raise. Other school employees, like librarians and counselors, would not be eligible, Exter said. The bill does not increase the base pay rate for teachers that's set in state law, known as the minimum salary schedule, but Patrick said the funding stream would continue "into perpetuity."

Senate Bill 3 was filed after the Texas House released its first budget proposal, which pitched billions more for public school funding.

Austin bureau chief Robert T. Garrett and education reporter Eva-Marie Ayala contributed to this report.