Teacher pay data debated

By BETHANY BLITZ

Staff Writer

School officials in the Coeur d’Alene area are refuting a report that their high school teachers are the lowest paid in the nation.

The report, published by a data collection company called Graphiq, listed the U.S. metro areas where it found high school teachers have the lowest salaries.

The report said Coeur d’Alene came in dead last, paying high school teachers an average of $36,470 per year. It said the national average is $57,200 per year.

The three largest public school districts in Kootenai County say that number is inaccurate.

The average salary for a high school teacher in the Coeur d’Alene School District is $45,668 per year. The Post Falls School District said its high school teachers make an average of $51,897 per year.

Lakeland School District teachers often teach both high school and middle school classes, so that district’s average salary of $50,801 per year is for all secondary level teachers.

The Graphiq report said it got its information from the 2016 Bureau of Labor Statistics and CareerTrends — a career research site operated by Graphiq itself.

“It’s always interesting to me how they get this information,” Lakeland School District assistant superintendent Lisa Sexton said of the Graphiq report. “If they looked at the state database for where teachers fall on the career ladder, that’s different than what we actually pay our teachers.”

Sexton also mentioned a lot of the district’s high school teachers have been teaching for a long time, and so get paid more. She wonders if that’s the same for other school districts in the area or if Lakeland is unique in that way.

Jerry Keane, superintendent of Post Falls School District, said he has no idea where the report got its numbers, but they’re wrong.

“I know our salaries are competitive for Idaho, and part of the reason is we have to compete with Washington,” he said. “I can’t respond to stuff where I don’t know how they got the information.”