RFP Staff
♦ For those who have viewed the concise segment of the North Carolina proposed budget that groups teacher salary steps into five year groups rather than the long-standing yearly steps may have wondered how the specifics may shed light on teacher pay increases. The legislature’s budget conference document for the A Teacher Salary schedule, the rates for teachers with the lowest educational degrees, reveals calculations that are less than precise but do provide an increase to each teacher.
View the budget conference document that details the new step pay and teacher salary increases here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2E5Ew6OLdElTWNpbnl1TFBDOHc/edit?usp=sharing
View the entire proposed budget here: http://www.ncleg.net/sessions/2013/budget/2014/S744-CCSMDXF-1-v-62.pdf
For the sake of simplicity, we will focus on how the budget will affect one teacher, a 22 year veteran teacher. In this case, the teacher holds a minimal four year bachelor’s degree and a North Carolina teaching license. In the proposed budget, a 22 year veteran teacher’s longevity supplement pay of 3.25% teacher longevity will be absorbed into his or her raise. The A Teacher Salary schedule document states this teacher will receive a 5.2% salary increase. Longevity pay is removed (a seeming breach of contract if challenged), and while incorporating it in the raise the legislature portrays closer to a 5.1% raise than the stated 5.2% raise. A true 5.2% raise for the 22 year veteran would be $2,329 rather than the $2,288 shown. Will corrections be made so that the teachers will receive the percentage promised in the document? According to the chart, no other increase will be considered until the teacher is a 25 year veteran. For contrast, a 19 year veteran teacher will receive a 9% increase next year. All teachers’ salaries are to be capped in the 25th year of service, and no teacher, not already compensated above $50,000, will make more than that amount.
Broad strokes stagnate all teachers’ pay for five year stretches. The increase column does not show fairly proportionate raises to those with the most experience, experience which often correlates to high student achievement and test scores. In each five-year tier above nine years of experience, raises vary greatly and decrease with experience and accompanying expertise. In the fifth “step”, a teacher hired twenty years ago will receive what is termed a 9% raise, while a teacher hired 25 years ago will receive what is termed a 2.4% raise (The calculations for that raise actually make it a 2.39% raise). Will the legislature clean up calculations so each teacher receives the percentage promised by the document? Will legislators revisit the salary cap and lack of compensation for its most seasoned teachers?
Five-year stagnant periods between pay increases and a cap on veteran salaries far before the end of a teaching career may encourage a continued exodus of those teachers with the most expertise. Will North Carolina continue to see the teacher exodus to states such as Texas and Tennessee that value experience and expertise? Many of those leaving are new teachers with an eye on their future security. Now, this line of thinking has taken for granted that legislators want to retain experienced teachers and not provide a disincentive for their stay. The antithesis would indicate that the legislature would calculate reducing the costs of its teacher retirement benefits by making the later years of a teacher’s employment less financially rewarding. If that were the goal, would losses in student achievement be worth savings in retirement packages?
The same new teachers passing up North Carolina’s teaching positions are choosing to work in states that offer a career outlook free from long salary stagnations or caps of their future compensation. Young folks who have matured during this long recession are more savvy when planning for future financial security than those who did not experience early financial crises. While North Carolina’s teachers will be relieved that some increases have been approved, and most taxpayers recognize our state must offer competitive salaries to those considering a teaching career, it is evident that North Carolina has not attended to the adequate compensation of a segment of its hardest working and most dedicated workers who have already waited six years for a significant cost of living increase. The big question will too soon be, how many North Carolina students witnessing the demoralizing decline of experienced teachers’ compensation will dream of being teachers here when they grow up?
