Teacher pay problems

COEUR d’ALENE — Teacher pay and the new way Idaho is dealing with it was the topic of discussion at the Kootenai County Democrat luncheon at the Iron Horse Bar and Grill Friday.

Phil Harding, the Region 1 director of the Idaho Education Association, said for the most part Idaho’s new career ladder teacher funding mechanism has been a welcome change, but there are still a few things he would like to see done.

The Idaho Legislature passed house bill 296 in 2015 in an effort to restore teachers’ pay back to levels the state was paying in 2008. The new legislation also changed the way the state plans to fund teacher salaries.

Harding said under the old state funding system, school districts would report the number of years their teachers worked and the number of college credits they have accumulated to establish that teacher’s salary.

The state provides those funds to the school district, then the school districts allocate those dollars to the teachers through a system of their own.

Under the new career ladder system, Harding said, districts report the number of years the teacher worked and whether they are certified with a residency certificate, or if they have received a professional endorsement.

Under the old system, teachers earned their teaching certificates and had to renew them periodically through the state.

Harding said the career ladder system issues a beginning teacher — with less than three years experience — a “residency certificate.” The beginning salary starts at $32,300 this year and tops out five years later at $37,000 a year for the residency level of the career ladder.

Under the new system, a new teacher has three years to meet certain requirements in order to become eligible for a “professional endorsement,” which is the second tier of the career ladder.

Some of those requirements include completing three years of teaching and receiving satisfactory performance evaluations. A majority of the teacher's students must also be progressing for the teacher to advance beyond the residency tier of the ladder.

A teacher with professional endorsement can earn from $47,600 to $50,000 annually. Teachers with three or more years of experience were grandfathered in with a professional endorsement.

Harding said the new funding mechanism has some real benefits, but there are still some problems that may need to be worked out.

“It has its pros and cons,” he said. “This model is better than the last system we had.”

He said teachers definitely have more earning potential under the career ladder system.

“But the challenge is when you get to the top of the ladder,” he said, explaining there are only 13 rungs to the career ladder and after that, teachers have reached their pay cap. “Once you get to the top, you are not going anywhere.”

Harding said it's a challenge because school districts in North Idaho compete against Washington for teachers, and Washington pays its teachers much more.

“A new teacher is faced with 'do I want to teach in Idaho for $32,000 a year, or do I teach in Washington for $38,000?'” Harding said.

Coeur d’Alene School Board Trustee Tom Hearn, who attended the luncheon, echoed Harding’s concerns about hitting the top of the career ladder. He also said the new system has its positive aspects, but some challenges as well.

“The positive is that the Legislature is putting more money into the system,” he said, adding the downside is the Legislature didn’t give local districts very much guidance on how to allocate the increased funding at the local level.

Hearn said the Coeur d’Alene School District pays its teachers a little more than the minimum salary allocated through the career ladder funding system. The additional salary is funded through other forms of revenue, such as local property tax levies. But Hearn said it isn't sustainable.

Hearn said 10 or 15 years ago, levy revenue accounted for about 5 percent of the district’s budget. Today that has increased to nearly 25 percent of the district’s budget. He said there has been a shift from state funding to local funding for teacher salaries.

Toward the end of the meeting, Harding said the IEA obviously has other concerns it would like to address in the Legislature, such as the push to privatize school funding.

He also said the association is concerned about funding education through a voucher system.