School districts throughout Washington have to negotiate new pay schedules for teachers. The state ended over 30 years of unfairly providing the most experienced teachers larger stipends for the same work and training as younger teachers.
School districts now have the opportunity to write fair salary schedules that would better attract young teachers to their schools and improve upon the perpetually low beginning teacher pay.
The state had used a staff mix formula that provided teacher salary funds based on years of experience and college credits (or clock hours) of teachers. Almost all districts in the state adopted the funding formula on the premise that each teacher should get the salary funding she generated from the state due to their own years and credits.
The salary schedules based on state funding, though, made little sense. The schedules reward the most experienced teachers far larger stipends for the same work.
Centralia’s schedule, for example, in 2016-17 provided a $1,770 increase in pay for one year of experience going from the 13th year to the 14th year in the “BA+90 credit” column. A beginning teacher got only $584 for the first year of experience in the same column. In the “BA+0” column, the increase for a year is $481.
Two teachers could also take the very same classes and earn 15 credits, but one with nine years of experience got a $1,690 increase while a teacher with one year experience got only $1,044.
Why does one year of experience earn over three times more at 14 years than the first year? And what makes the same 15 credits so much more valuable at nine years than one year of experience? It’s the same gain in experience or training, but the more senior teachers got far more money.
State Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, played a central role in ending the unfair staff mix funding formula and implementing equal salary funding for each teacher within a district.
Urban schools have also always done better attracting and retaining teachers resulting in more money per teacher for salaries. Teachers gravitate toward urban schools, which have higher levies, more training, smaller classes and greater help with more specialists, counselors and educational assistants, giving teachers a better chance at professional success.
Most teacher contracts, including in Centralia, require school districts to pass state dollars through to teachers based on how the money is generated. When this contract clause is applied to the new equal salary funding for each teacher within each school district, it would require all teachers be paid the same.
Newer teachers might prefer they receive all the dollars their position generates (and might say that’s how it’s been done in the past), but it goes against the belief of most districts and most staffs that experience and training improve instruction and should be rewarded.
How can a more fair salary schedule be created and what is the best approach for the community?
Prior to the Basic Education Act, many districts had squared indexes whereby each year of experience and each block of 15 credits earned the same additional pay. If the stipend was $600, then for every added year of experience, $600 was added, and for every 15 credits, $600 was added.
Districts also had shorter schedules. Most salary schedules didn’t go over 12 years of experience.
A shorter salary schedule with equal stipends for years and training would provide beginning teachers higher salaries and more of the dollars their positions will generate under the new law.
This salary schedule would make rural schools more competitive when attracting and retaining the best new teachers with the latest instructional methods.
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Neal Kirby is a former Centralia School Board member and longtime principal at Edison Elementary School.
