A one-time payment for missed steps on the teacher pay scale and the idea of “compression” were not well-received concepts as the York County School Division heard a presentation on the teacher pay scale Monday night.
The division’s teacher pay scale has been frozen for five years. In December last year, York Education Association President Carol Bauer told the school board, based on two surveys, teachers say it’s time to unfreeze it.
In April, the school board started looking for a contractor to study the pay scale and suggest changes. Evergreen Solutions LLC was selected for the job in July and work began shortly thereafter with the help of a few division employees.
The study is fourfold: it looks at feedback from teachers, examines the current pay scale, compares the pay scale to competing divisions and, finally, suggests a new pay plan. In November, the school board received preliminary results from the first part of the study – the feedback from teachers.
The survey showed the top complaint among teachers was they wanted their salaries unfrozen. On Monday, Jeff Ling, Evergreen’s executive vice president, presented more detail on the findings of the pay scale study.
Ling showed Evergreen had considered two different pay scale adjustment ideas: a linear/regular increase pay scale and a pay scale that mimicked a teacher’s life cycle.
A linear/regular increase would mean a teacher would get a fixed percentage increase per year, regardless of whether they’re moving from their first to second year or to their 30th. A linear/regular increase of about 1.5 percent to 1.75 percent could cost the division anywhere from $2.2 million to about $4.7 million to implement.
The idea of a “teacher life cycle” addresses the periods of time in which teachers tend to leave the profession by offering the largest pay increases during those high-risk times to try to leverage employee retention.
The first period in which the turnover rate is high among teachers is within their first five years in the profession. Because many teachers are still figuring out whether they have chosen the right career and often have less tying them down to one place right out of college, teachers are at a higher risk of leaving their job in the first five years.
A second period of high risk of a teacher leaving his or her job is in the seven to nine-year range. Ling said in this period, many teachers have developed their reputation and start looking around for better job offers or go back to school to be an administrator.
If adopted, the teacher life cycle method could cost the division anywhere from $740,000 to $2.7 million to implement.
Unfreezing the current pay scale would cost the division $2.6 million. Dennis Jarrett, CFO for the school division, has on several occasions warned the division does not yet have any money set aside in its budget to implement an unfrozen or new pay scale.
To switch to either pay scale method, the board would have to deal with compression, which refers to when teachers who have been working for the division for several years are making the same amount of money as a new teacher, and decide if they wanted to use a one-time payment method to switch to a new scale.
As some semblance of compensating for compression during the period of switching to a new pay scale, Ling presented the possibility of offering a one-time payment to teachers based on how many steps they have missed. The amount presented to the board was anywhere from $50 per step to $150 per step, meaning — in a best-case scenario — someone who had missed all five steps would get a one-time payment of $750.
The idea was not well-received among the school board members. Board Member Mark Medford said he was displeased with the idea, saying teachers are “professionals” with “tuition bills to pay.” Board Member Cindy Kirschke echoed the sentiment, but was not sure how to bring the pay scale up to speed.
“I don’t know when or if we can make folks whole again,” Kirschke said.
All board members agreed they needed more time to digest the information. They decided they would revisit the issue at their Jan. 2 organizational meeting. Evergreen Solutions will return to the board in late January or early February.