(a) The State Board of Education shall establish a schedule of minimum salaries for services rendered which shall be on a ten-month basis and which shall be paid by local units of administration to the various classifications of professional personnel required to be certificated by the Professional Standards Commission. The minimum salary schedule shall provide a minimum salary base for each classification of professional personnel required to be certificated; shall provide for increment increases above the minimum salary base of each classification based upon individual experience and length of satisfactory service; and shall include such other uniformly applicable factors as the state board may find relevant to the establishment of such a schedule. The minimum salary base for certificated professional personnel with bachelor's degrees and no experience, when annualized from a ten-month basis to a 12 month basis, shall be comparable to the beginning salaries of the recent graduates of the University System of Georgia holding bachelor's degrees and entering positions, excluding professional educator teaching positions, in Georgia having educational entry requirements comparable to the requirements for entry into Georgia public school teaching. The placement of teachers on the salary schedule shall be based on certificate level and years of creditable experience, except that a teacher shall not receive credit for any year of experience in which the teacher received an unsatisfactory or ineffective annual summative performance evaluation or for the second year in which a teacher receives two consecutive annual summative needs development ratings pursuant to Code Section 20-2-210. The General Assembly shall annually appropriate funds to implement a salary schedule for certificated professional personnel. For each state fiscal year, the state board shall adopt the salary schedule for which funding has been appropriated by the General Assembly. A local unit of administration shall not pay to any full-time certificated professional employee a salary less than that prescribed by the schedule of minimum salaries, except as required by this Code section; nor shall a local unit of administration pay to any part-time certificated professional employee less than a pro rata portion of the respective salary prescribed by the schedule of minimum salaries, except as required by this Code section. For purposes of this subsection, an educator's placement on the salary schedule shall not be based on a leadership degree, which shall mean a degree earned in conjunction with completion of an educator leadership preparation program approved by the Professional Standards Commission, unless the educator is employed in a leadership position as defined by the State Board of Education, but shall be placed on the salary schedule position attributable to the educator but for the leadership degree; provided, however, that this shall not apply, regardless of whether or not he or she is in a leadership position, to:

(1) An educator who possessed a leadership degree prior to July 1, 2010; or

(2) An educator who possessed:

(A) A master's level leadership degree prior to July 1, 2012;

(B) An education specialist level leadership degree prior to July 1, 2013; or

(C) A doctoral level leadership degree prior to July 1, 2014,

so long as he or she was enrolled in such leadership preparation program on or before April 1, 2009.

(b) Local units of administration may supplement the salaries of personnel subject to the schedule of minimum salaries under subsection (a) of this Code section and, in fixing the amount of those supplements, may take into consideration the nature of duties to be performed, the responsibility of the position held, the subject matter or grades to be taught, and the experience and performance of the particular employee whose salary is being supplemented. In any fiscal year in which such personnel receive an increase under the minimum salary schedule, a local unit of administration shall not decrease any local salary supplement for such personnel below the local supplement amount received in the immediately preceding fiscal year by those personnel of that local unit of administration unless such local unit of administration has conducted at least two public hearings regarding such decrease, notice of which hearings, including the time, place, agenda, and specific subject matter of the meeting, the local unit shall cause to be published in the legal organ of the county which is the legal situs of such local unit one time at least seven days prior to the date such hearings are to be held. Written notice shall be provided to each employee subject to the schedule of minimum salaries under subsection (a) of this Code section at least seven days prior to the date of the hearings. Each such hearing shall be held and shall commence after school hours to allow certificated and noncertificated personnel to attend.

(c) A local unit of administration shall pay beginning classroom teachers the first salary payment for the number of days worked at the end of the first month of the school year in which service is rendered. The State Board of Education shall develop rules and procedures for implementing this subsection by July 1, 2001.