Pay Decreases Are NOT Raises…Yet Again….
Our sweet, always diligent legislature passed the new teacher pay schedule this summer, and with it touted the “largest teacher pay raise” in NC history. Except is it really a pay raise? Again, I question it, this time with numbers in front of me.
So I started looking at the numbers, reminding myself of the scale I had been handed when I began teaching. It showed small but steady increases for each year I taught. In case you are one of the many who believe that teacher pay is ridiculously high, the numbers were usually around $400, with larger jumps at certain increments. Our legislature argued it wasn’t competitive enough with other teacher salary scales around the country- it isn’t, it didn’t offer many incentives for teachers to remain in NC after finishing their education degree- it doesn’t, and it needed to go. So it went. NCAE and teachers everywhere were hesitant, but at least something was being done, right?
It turns out that is where we went wrong. We thought that during the discussions of teacher pay, things like cost of living would come up. We thought we would have a more transparent pay system. Our state government had a different idea. Their feeling was that the scale should offer more to first year teachers, which I think everyone agreed with. BUT the catch was, that money would come from the paychecks of teachers who had been in schools the longest. The scale would essentially freeze for five years at a time, until finally allowing teachers to make $50,000 at 25 years. Teachers entering the profession would make several thousand dollars more. And there was another. Teachers would be asked to give up their longevity pay. And of course, the last catch- you would make less over a lifetime if you elected to teach for 30 years.
For those of you unfamiliar with our surprisingly complicated teacher pay scale, longevity pay is given to teachers after a certain period of time. They obtain “career status” and start getting about $1000 extra dollars a year for the their service to the state. That’s right, educating children is considered a service to the state, because you are theoretically, contributing to the state economy. This would continue as long as you were/are a teacher. This catch would mean you could choose between the new scale and no longevity pay, or you could keep your longevity pay but stay on the old scale. So you could keep your career status and not get a raise or you could get a “raise” and give up your career status.
The problem with all of this, is that it was a LIE. That’s right. I said it. If anyone from any legislative branch would like to sit and discuss this with me, I would love to meet with you because it is entirely possible I’m misunderstanding your intentions. It might be that I am just confused. Because when I looked at the 2008-2009 scale (in this case the most important scale since it was the LAST TIME any teacher stepped up), it had a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no longevity making about 1.2 million over the course of a career. This was if you stuck with it for 30 years and never got National Board certification or a Master’s Degree (not that that one matters anymore). Now, if you decide to make teaching your career, you will come out making about 12% LESS than you would have six years ago. If you are currently a Master’s salaried teacher, you’ll be taking a 14% lifetime pay DECREASE. That’s right, I said it. DECREASE. I did the math a couple of times because all I had been hearing about was pay increases, and surely a basic understanding is that means, over the course of working 30 years, you should end up making more money, right? If you are getting a raise?
If you’re interested in looking at the scale, and seeing where you think it should fall, check it out here: 2008-2009 Pay Schedule and 2014-2015 Pay Schedule. I’m not addressing the sad fate of a 30 year teacher still not making the national average of $56,000. And I’m not talking about why teachers have one of the lowest paid Master’s level salary of any field (Less than $60,000 for a 30 year veteran). And I’m certainly not going to comment on one of the saddest comments I read during the debacle, stated “Confused about why teachers should ever get a pay raise since they do the same thing every year?”. I think most people are confused about what teachers do, and how they are paid, and I understand- it’s complicated. But could it be that it’s been kept complicated on purpose? What if our salaries were as straightforward, as, say, the Governor’s salary. While I couldn’t find his number, I did find this article, in which he stated Im trying to make it at least where they can afford to live while running multibillion-dollar departments, while justifying these increases. I’m not saying that his cabinet was undeserving of the raises, but to say that they can’t subsist on $120,000 a year while teachers are fighting for $33,000 a year is not the best statement to make during such an iffy time. And did he need to give 11% increases? I’m not sure. What I am pretty sure of is that over the course of a lifetime, that will add up to MORE money for those employees, and not less. Which is the hoax within the new schedule.
Of course, what it comes down to is whether teachers are valued for what they are doing. I heard a teacher say she too was managing millions of dollars. She looked at her students each day and saw future doctors, lawyers, executives, entrepreneurs, engineers, and, God help her, a future Governor or Senator. She looked beyond what she was teaching at the moment- reading, writing, mathematics, life lessons on why you should never throw scissors and how to handle paper cuts- and saw the future, saw children who would be taking care of her one day. I think that’s a question we should all be asking. How do we want our children to take care of us? What tools do we want to equip them with to make sure they are responsible, productive, creative, and wonderful citizens? And how do we want to equip the people that will interact with them for most of each working day of the year to make that happen?
