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Board scales up demand for teacher pay hike
Board scales up demand for teacher pay hikeBy Alice Felts
Times-Democrat Staff Writer
This is the first part of a two-part series on Fauquier County teachers' salaries.
The majority of school superintendent Dr. Jonathan Lewis' proposed budget increase for FY09 is for Fauquier County Public School employee salaries, but the school board may decide that line item doesn't go far enough when it comes to teachers.
Salaries and benefits make up $7.8 million of the total proposed budget increase of $12.9 million. That includes teachers and staff in two new schools scheduled to open in the fall.
Under a three-year plan approved by the previous school administration, teachers were to receive $3,000 salary hikes for each of three years, with the goal of reaching a competitive beginning salary of just over $40,000.
For FY08, teachers were scheduled to receive the last $3,000 installment, but due to budget constraints, the payment was divided in half ? $1,500 for FY08 and $1,500 for FY09.
Lewis' adhered to that plan as he prepared his FY09 budget recommendation. But after reviewing his proposal, Center District school board representative Sally Murray strongly recommended that teachers be given a larger raise.
At a meeting on Jan. 28, the board asked school staff to provide a financial information scenario in which all teachers would receive the scheduled $1,500, but teachers with salaries over $43,000 would receive an additional one percent raise.
Andy Hawkins, FCPS budget and operations manager, calculated that the additional one percent would cost an additional $516,669.
In addition to the $1,500 per teacher already envisioned in Lewis' budget proposal, educators will get additional pay increases through what is commonly called “the step and column system.”
Based on the number of years of experience and educational degrees, teachers receive a scheduled pay increase each year, regardless of what the administration and school board request.
In this system, teachers automatically receive an increase in salary each year they teach. They also receive more money if they expand their education.
For instance, according to the 2007-08 scale, a teacher in Fauquier County with a bachelor’s degree and two year’s experience will make $39,250. In year three, that teacher will make $39,500.
If that same teacher had earned 15 graduate hours in addition to a bachelor's degree, he or she would have made $39,250 with only one year’s experience and $39,500 in two years.
The increase of salary can be greater for other teachers, depending on which “step and column” the educator ranks.
The National Education Association recently released the results of a salary study in which Virginia ranked 31st nationwide in teacher pay and is almost $6,100 under the national average of $50,816.
That's the state as a whole.
In Fauquier County, according to Hawkins, the current mean average salary for Fauquier County teachers is $52,676 ? about $1,800 higher than the national average.
Starting teachers in Fauquier have an average salary of $40,000, which is considerably higher than the national average of $30, 377.
The NEA's “Living Wage” calculator claims that the typical monthly expenses for one adult in Fauquier County requires an annual income of $23,581. Two adults with two children require a salary of $51,097.
Lewis said that during the recent superintendent transition, Interim Superintendent Dale Sander said that all teachers receiving the same increase in the three-year plan knocked the scale “out of sync,” making it “not really aligned.”
He suggested that Lewis communicate with the Virginia School Board Association about its formula to rebuild the scale, and Lewis said that he plans to take such action over the next year.
Next week: Keeping in step: How teacher salaries are structured.
E-mail the reporter: afelts@timespapers.com.
Sidebar
Increasing teacher salaries seems to also be on the mind of some Virginia legislators.
House Bill 92 ? Standards of Quality ? introduced in the current General Assembly session, is aimed at the recruiting and retaining high-quality instructional personnel.
Currently in the Appropriations Committee, the bill stipulates that the average teacher salary in Virginia at least equal the national average.
For many teachers in Virginia's 132 school districts, such legislation would be good news.
The National Education Association found that “annual pay for teachers has fallen sharply over the past 60 years in relation to the annual pay of other workers with college degrees.”
Additional NEA findings showed that “throughout the nation the average earnings of workers with at least four years of college are now over 50 percent higher than the average earnings of a teacher.”
The advocate organization also published a report, “Rankings and Estimates: Rankings of the States 2006 and Estimates of School Statistics 2007,” in which it found “the average one-year increase in public school teacher salaries was 2.9 percent, while inflation escalated 3.0 percent.”
To illustrate, NEA offers several calculators on its Web page to assist teachers in determining true salary, family budget and living costs.
But what is a true salary?
NEA recommends that teachers look beyond contracted school hours and days.
The NEA Web site encourages educators to consider “off-the-clock” hours for such things as grading papers, planning lessons, helping students before and after school, meeting with parents, shopping for school supplies, taking certification courses, and advising school clubs.
Doing so, the association said, underscores just how miserly teachers are paid.
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