Pictured: Misty Matthews, a teacher at Creekview Elementary, works with students during a hands on science learning exercise. She, along with other teachers at Carbon School District, are now on a new salary schedule that helps teachers at all levels financially.
Carbon School District Press Release
With a spate of changes across the state in teachers’ salaries as school districts try to attract and retain what is considered a scarce resource, the competition for instructors has risen and rural school districts are having to find new ways to keep the pipeline going.
In the case of Carbon School District, one of those ways was to change the salary schedule for certified personnel, so it not only benefits teachers who are new but also those with a great deal of longevity.
“We had a couple of goals,” said Darin Lancaster, the Business Administrator for the district. “The first was to increase the starting salaries. The changes in the Wasatch Front districts and their plans to increase salaries is what brought on this discussion. We also wanted the ending salaries for long term teachers to be increased as well. What we developed was a schedule that has a higher starting salary and provides steady increases throughout a teacher’s career.
The schedule has now been changed so that instead of multiple lanes, there is only one lane with multiple steps over a teachers career. And the amount of money a teacher gets year to year becomes greater throughout the length of their career with the district instead of reaching a plateau and staying there.
“In the old schedule, in years 1-10 there were steep salary increases,” said Lancaster. “And then after that it plateaued for a number of years. There were three steps added to the schedule that would give long-term teachers a little bump at their 11th, 17th and 25th years with the district. But, essentially under the old schedule once a teacher passed that 10-year mark, they didn’t get much of a raise.”
Under the old schedule, the money was mostly invested in the first 10 years a teacher was with the district.
“If you took someone under the old schedule with a 30-year career in Carbon School District, the raises they would receive over their first ten years would average about $1,500 per year,” Lancaster said. “However, over the next 20 years, their raises would only average about $150 per year.”
While this type of system sounds like it will cost the district a lot more money, the dollars that the district now pays teachers over their career will be basically as it was under the old schedule, but it will be parsed out differently.
“With this new schedule, the district will be paying essentially the same amount for a 30-year career teacher as it did under the old schedule,” said Lancaster. “It doesn’t cost the district any more, but just spreads it out differently.”
Starting salaries for teachers will now be around $40,000 per year. Then, every year there is a step continually of $500 per year. Cost of living adjustments will go on top of what the original schedule dictates and with the entire schedule shifting to meet those changes. Regardless, the $500 per year bump will remain the same.
With this change, there are a few teachers, based on their years of service, that would be caught in a situation where they would not gain with the new schedule as compared with where they now are. But Lancaster said the district has an answer for that.
“If a teacher is currently on step 10 in terms of longevity, but that same salary amount would be step 16 on the new schedule, in the transition process we will move them to that higher step on the new schedule so that their salary amount is at least the same as what they had been receiving,” he stated.
With the new schedule, the early year teachers, which the district has a lot of at the present time, would have gotten a huge raise in the first year, which could have caused problems among the teaching ranks and the cost would have been prohibitive as well. So, there were six transitional steps inserted in those first six years that takes those teachers half the distance to their proper step this year, and next year they will be moved the rest of the distance to where they meet the new schedule.
“After this coming year, everyone will be on the new schedule,” said Lancaster. “Hopefully these changes will aide in recruitment of teachers to the district and longer term teachers will enjoy the new increases.”
There will still be a weighing of the degrees and hours that teachers obtain as they work in the district. This will be done by having teachers who gain further education jump steps to serve as an increase for their efforts. For instance, a teacher that gets a master’s after holding a bachelor’s degree will rise five steps to reward them for their educational attainment.
The Educator Salary Adjustment that was approved by the legislature a few years ago will still hold true. That amount is $4,200 and it comes as a direct line item from the legislature. That is given to career teachers who are judged to be effective in the classroom. At one time, that money was presented separate from the salary schedule, but now it is part of it.
“We have made it clear that if they do not receive an effective grade, that money will be deducted from their salary,” said Lancaster.
The schedule also allows for experience that a new teacher to Carbon might have gained by doing instruction elsewhere. If they have, for instance, six years of prior teaching experience, they will be placed on step six.
Another advantage of this schedule for long term teachers is that at the end of their career, their last years of earnings will be higher than they were under the old one. State pensions and social security payments are based on those last years of earnings so they will get more money from those payments as well.
The Carbon County Education Association membership approved the new schedule with 98.3 percent voting yes for it when they cast their ballots in late June.
“This change will help the district with their teacher recruiting efforts,” said Chris Sweeney the President of the CCEA. “It is a fiscally conservative plan and allows everyone to build for the future.”
Outgoing CCEA President Paulie Vogrenic said that sometimes it is easy to be short sighted about what is presented from negotiations, but that in this case a vast majority of instructors thought the change was positive.