Teachers Asking for 18 Percent Raise, or Are They?

There's a lot of information floating around out there about the .  Here's a breakdown of the salary information as I understand it.

Number of Teachers

Even the number of teachers that work in the district is up for debate.  The school board uses something called fulltime equivalents.  Some teachers in the district are not fulltime.  They work at a percentage of full-time, for example 40 percent or sixty percent.   If you add that teacher working at 40 percent with another teacher working at 60 percent you get the equivalent of one fulltime teacher.  The school board uses the fulltime equivalent number of 917 in its negotiating materials.

The union on the other hand uses 943 as its number because that is the number of actual people that are employed by the school district part-time and fulltime.  The teachers want to use that number, one because if you include more people it changes the average, but two because not all part-time employees get paid the same rate, just like all fulltime employees are not paid the same rate.

The Salary Schedule

All district employees fall somewhere on a previously agreed salary schedule.  The district adds your years of experience with your post-graduate education credits, and determines your salary.

Under the previous contract, a brand new teacher with no post-graduation credits earned a starting salary of $46,000.  A teacher with 17 years of experience and a doctorate made $99,105.  It should be noted that less than five teachers in the district had both 17 years of experience and a doctorate.  The average salary in the district is around $65,000, which would be around 8-12 years of experience with a master’s degree.

So what about this 18 percent?

The school board has said several times and in several meetings that the teachers are asking for a salary increase of about 18 percent over the three years of the next contract.  Essentially, the teachers would receive an almost six percent salary increase each year.

The teachers argue that things are a little more complicated than that.  When the teachers receive an increase in salary it is not a direct raise.  The amount of money available in the budget for teachers’ salaries is qincreased and then that is distributed down.

I’m still confused

Okay, let’s say there are 10 teachers making $100 a year.  That means the district budgeted $1,000 that year for teachers’ salaries.  If the teachers get a 10 percent raise they all don’t automatically start making $110.  Instead, the money available for teacher salaries grows from $1,000 to $1,100. 

If all 10 of those teachers were hired at the same time, with the same amount of post-graduate work, then they would all make $110.  However, the money is divided up by the salary schedule.  Some teachers with more experience and more education might receive the full $10, and others with less experience and less education might receive five extra dollars or maybe even three.

Applied in the real world

Let's say you have three teachers in the district all with 8 years of experience.  One teacher has a bachelor's degree, one has a master's and one has a doctorate.

Under the previous contract their salries would break down like this:

Now, with an added year of experience:

Now, all on one chart with the difference in salary included:

Now, all on one chart with the percentage change in salary included:

The Point?

The point is that you have three teachers with three separate education levels getting three separate raises.  Spread that over 943 teachers or 917 fulltime equivalents and there's going to be a lot of variation. 

To say that all teachers would receive an 18 percent raise over the three years isn't exactly true.  The amount of money available to increase salries over that time would increase.  It would then be distributed unevenly based on experience and education level.

To read more about the teacher's negotiations please click on one of the following links: