what michigan school districts are giving steps to teachers

We put out a non-scientific survey earlier this summer request teachers in the state how they've seen their pay change over the by several years. (Y'all can check out the survey questions here.)

We heard from 390 teachers across more 115 districts, which is awesome. (Thanks, teachers!)

Nosotros'll go through the six main themes that emerged, simply first let'southward get upwardly to speed on the basics.

A primer on teacher pay

Public school teachers in Michigan and most of the country follow a salary schedule that doles out automated and relatively small incremental raises for each year of service (these are called "steps") and gives a bigger pay bump for boosted educational attainment, like a master's degree or PhD (these are chosen "lanes").

The number of "steps" and "lanes" varies from district to district. It can have seven steps to accomplish the top of the teacher pay ladder in ane commune and 30 steps in another district.  There are no more yearly step increases after a instructor reaches the meridian step, but some districts offering "longevity" bonuses for veteran teachers.

Theme ane - "My pay has been frozen for six years"

There'due south very fiddling guess work if you lot're a teacher around how much you'll make in v or 10 years because it's all laid out in the salary schedule. Take the most recent Detroit Public Schools Community District's contract (information technology expired June 30; new contract talks are underway) for a teacher with a bachelor's caste:

• Step 1: $35,683
• Pace 5: $42,219
• Step 10:$56,099

At that place it is in black and white. Your salary schedule for the next 10 years -- bold at that place are no pay cuts or step freezes which keep teachers at their current step for an extended menstruation of time. But as we discovered in our teacher salary survey, pay cuts and freezes are not unusual.

We reached out to the state, educational non-profits, and teacher unions. It appears nobody tracks contract negotiations and pay freezes or cuts in the 500+ districts across the land. So let'due south employ our non-scientific survey as a proxy:

Of the 118 districts represented in the survey, 84 districts experienced a pay freeze in the by five years, 34 districts did not. In other words, y'all could be working x years in a district and only be getting paid a fourth yr teacher's bacon.

Not good for teacher morale and non practiced for your pocketbook.

Theme 2 - The ladder keeps growing

The amount of pay you go at each step and lane change varies depending on the contract bargained betwixt 1 particular district and its unions. The number of steps themselves varies widely between districts, too.

Kate Walsh is with the non-turn a profit National Council on Teacher Quality and she'south studied teacher pay for years. She says "the worst districts have 30 steps and reserve the biggest increases for the end of a teacher'southward career," or what she calls "back-loading."

Our pay starts very depression and then takes fifteen steps to reach top pay. With pace freezes, I'thousand not sure I'll ever become there. I've been working for seven years and it has not been like shooting fish in a barrel to convince myself to stay in the profession. -- public school teacher, Berkley

Nosotros noticed in our survey that a number of districts accept extended their salary schedule ladder in recent years so that it takes longer to get to the top. In the Shiawassee Regional Education Service District, for example, information technology used to take 11 years to brand it to that district's top of the pay calibration. At present information technology takes 21 years.

David Hecker with the American Federations of Teachers in Michigan says adding more than pay steps is almost never a proposal from the spousal relationship simply rather from management and then "they can stretch out how long it takes for someone to get to the top of the scale."

Credit Image courtesy of National Council on Teacher Quality

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That has a huge touch on on lifetime earnings, says NCTQ'southward Kate Walsh. If higher pay is back loaded at the end similar in Shiawasse RESD, a instructor volition make substantially less in lifetime earnings.

Theme 3 - "I desire my three percent back!"

This type of quote came upwards a lot in our teacher survey, so I chosen up Craig Thiel at the Citizen'due south Research Quango of Michigan to have him walk me through the details.

Thiel says in 2010 the costs for providing retiree health care benefits to retired teachers was increasing and causing "a strain" on school districts, and then the Legislature decided to shift some of those costs from the district (employer) to school employees to the tune of 3%.

And so from 2010-12, iii% was taken out of school employees' salaries to help finance retiree health benefits for teachers who had already retired. All told $550 million was taken out during that time flow, which afflicted roughly 280,000 school employees.

Was it legal? That's however up for debate. The state Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the school employees, but Governor Rick Snyder appealed the conclusion. The case - and what to do with the money - is now earlier the Michigan Supreme Court.

Theme four - "My health insurance costs accept increased faster than my salary"

Lots has been written about the increased wellness costs for public service employees, so we're not going to get also far in the weeds here. But it's worth noting that a majority of teachers in our survey point to how those increased healthcare costs have led to either brackish pay or a decrease in take-home pay.

Theme v - It's "punitive to switch districts"

I showtime heard well-nigh this from a teacher friend who told me she couldn't change districts because most districts wouldn't pay her for all her prior years of experience. She had worked ten years in Wayne-Westland and wanted to move to a district in Oakland County, just they wouldn't compensate her all 10 years of her prior prior experience. It's a point that came upwards numerous times in our survey.

"I can't recall of another sector where you effectively are counted every bit a less experienced employee because y'all didn't have your feel in that building or that region."

Josh Cowen is an education professor at Michigan State University and studies instructor mobility. He says "there's non a whole lot of justification for these prohibitions on years of experience earned," and he says there'southward nothing in the research that would justify doing so.

"I can't think of some other sector where you effectively are counted as a less experienced employee because you didn't have your experience in that building or that region," says Cowen.

He and other critics say these kinds of restrictions injure students because it makes it difficult to "staff places where kids need them the most."

Our friends over at Bridge Magazine did a great write-up on this, which y'all should cheque out. Here's an excerpt:

Say you're a teacher with 10 years' feel at Utica schools, which had layoffs concluding year. To piece of work in Detroit, you lot'd have to have most $36,000 less, going from more than than $78,500 to simply under $43,000 because eight years' of experience wouldn't count. Detroit already pays less, with teachers topping out at $65,265 subsequently 10 years, compared with well over $78,000 in most districts. Just the brake put in identify by the teachers – and agreed upon by the administration – makes that cut even more steep.

Theme 6 - "Get out our pensions lonely."

Pensions came upwardly a lot in our teacher survey -- specifically teachers were worried that their retirement organization was "under assault" past the state Legislature. A public school teacher in Warren Woods described pensions as "the merely thing they had going for them," and as of this week they don't accept that anymore, either.

Governor Rick Snyder signed into law a new retirement plan for public school employees that automatically enrolls new employees into a 401(grand) plan. A hybrid system will however be bachelor to those employees that want a combination pension and 401(k), simply it'll exist more than expensive for the instructor.

In our next post in this series, we'll look at how teacher pay stacks upwards to other comparable professions.

This mail service was updated on July 26, 2017 at 4:20pm to clarify the definition of a step freeze.

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Source: https://www.michiganradio.org/education/2017-07-25/these-6-themes-emerged-when-we-asked-michigan-teachers-about-their-pay

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