Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated

In our district we spend about $10.8 million dollars on salaries.  This equates to about 62% of the total General Operating Fund Budget.  This percentage at first glance seemed very low to me and made me think we were not paying our teachers adequately.  Upon further review, I began to think differently.  

I knew that our salaries were competitive with surrounding districts, but I also found that these other districts also use roughly the same percent of their budget.  Our percentage is still lower, but not by much.  Another realization I had was in relation to our financial situation.  We have always been a very financially sound district. Even in the financial crisis that we are in now, we are still doing OK.  We were even able to give a raise to all employees this year.  The reason we could is probably in part due to the fact that we only use 62% of our budget on salaries.  If our salary percentage was as high as 80-85% we would be feeling the budget cuts much harder and would not even be able to consider raises.

With all that being said, I do feel that we could increase our spending on salary a bit. In doing so, we would be impacting many other portions of our budget too.  If we were to increase salaries by 5% there are positive and negatives. 

First and most obvious would be a boost in morale.  Anytime you can pay someone more for the work they are doing, they will be happier.  Secondly, if the district were able to tell the employees “Thank You” with a pay raise, it would reward them for their hard work and dedication.  Another positive reason for a pay raise would be for retention.  Teachers will probably stick around if they are financially benefiting.  Finally, by giving a raise we are competing for salaries at a higher level.  We are currently on the low-end of the competitive salary scale in our area.  It would be nice to move up that list and have districts compete to catch us.

The most obvious negative impact of a 5% pay raise would be the huge amount of money that it would cost.  For our small, property-poor, 3A school district it would be a little over half a million dollars in salary increases.  That kind of increased spending would have damaging effects on other programs that would have to be cut or reduced.  Another negative reason would be that if you did not cut other programs, you would have to dip into your Reserve Funds.  With state funding being cut right now, I do not think anybody wants to do that.

Salaries and raises are always a hot topic of discussion.  This is something that superintendents must have as a priority in order to be successful and long lasting in a district.  Not only is it important for the superintendent, but also educators have always been underpaid and I think any extra money we can give them would be well deserved and appropriate.