Webinar Moderators
- Dana Grayson, Director of Teacher Workforce, WestEd
- Sarah Barzee, Senior Director of State Education Services, WestEd
- Tara Bergfeld, Senior Education Finance Associate, WestEd
Featured Speakers:
- Dr. Mark Holodick, Delaware’s Secretary of Education, Delaware Department of Education
- Kelly Meadows, Assistant State Superintendent of the Division of Educator Effectiveness, Maryland State Department of Education
- Dr. Sara Hale, Chief Operating Officer, Milford School District
- Erin Lair, Former Superintendent, Baker School District
- Dr. Victor Diaz, Organization Development Specialist at WestEd
Danny Torres:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar. Our topic, teacher compensation reforms. We’ll be hearing from WestEd experts on this topic and from state and district leaders, including Victor Diaz, organizational development specialist at WestEd and former HR school district administrator; Sara Hale, chief operating officer for Milford School District in Delaware; Mark Holodick, secretary of education for the state of Delaware; Erin Lair, former superintendent at Baker School District in Oregon; and Kelly Meadows, assistant superintendent of the Division of Educator Effectiveness at the Maryland State Department of Education.
Together, we’ll tackle the issue at the forefront of compensation – how do we fund it? Thank you all very much for joining us. My name is Danny Torres. I’m associate director of events and digital media for WestEd. I’ll be your host. Now, before we move into the contents of today’s webinar, I’d like to take a brief moment to introduce WestEd.
WestEd is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that aims to improve the lives of children and adults at all ages of learning and development. We do this by addressing challenges in education and human development, reducing opportunity gaps, and helping build communities where all can thrive. And now I’d like to pass the mic over to Dana Grayson, director of WestEd’s Teacher Workforce team. She’ll be introducing the session today. Dana, take it away.
Dana Grayson:
Thanks, Danny. Welcome, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us. My name is Dana Grayson. I direct WestEd’s Teacher Workforce Program. And in our program, we partner with states and districts to design and implement policies to strengthen the educator workforce. I’m joined by my two WestEd colleagues. Sarah Barzee is a senior director of state education services at WestEd and a member of our Teacher Workforce team. Prior to WestEd, Sarah served as the chief talent officer at the Connecticut State Department of Education.
I’m also joined by Tara Bergfeld, who’s a senior education finance associate on WestEd’s Resource Planning team. She works with state and districts in school finance reform. We are going to spend the majority of our time today hearing from our panelists, who we will introduce shortly. First, we’re going to spend about 10 minutes just setting the stage on the issue of teacher compensation. And after that, we’ll spend about 45 minutes with our panelists in a Q&A-style conversation.
If you have questions, we welcome you to drop them in the chat or in the webinar Q&A so we can try to field them as we go, and we will also try to save some time for questions at the end of the panel. So our objectives for today’s session. We aim to build our common understanding of best practices in navigating teacher compensation reform in our own school systems. We want to learn from other states about how they are addressing this issue through the panel discussion, and we want to provide you an opportunity to engage with your peers in problem-solving in this space.
Let’s get started by learning a little bit more about the group who has joined us here today. So we’re going to do a quick exercise in the chat. If you would, just please let us know, why does teacher compensation matter in your context right now? Just consider why this question matters today and what brought you here to join this webinar. All right. I see cost of living. That’s definitely a big one. And we’ll invite you to continue to drop your thoughts in the chat as we get started and we go through the research, and we’ll make sure to come back to the chat in a moment.
So I think we can go forward. So first, we know teacher salary is a major driver of retention and recruitment. You’ve likely seen some of the numbers on the screen before. We know teacher attrition continues to be high. Teacher diversity gaps persist. Teacher prep is on the decline, and teacher salaries are just not keeping pace with other similarly credentialed professionals. And really, addressing these issues is going to be essential to ensuring a strong, diverse, and well-supported teaching workforce.
And I’m seeing in the chat similar thoughts about this, teacher staffing challenges, recruitment, retention, staff quality. All of these things are factors that can relate to compensation. And on our next slide, we talk a little bit about a snapshot of teacher compensation nationally. So we know teachers face a substantial wage gap. Despite most of them having advanced degrees, it can take decades for most teachers to reach a $75,000-a-year salary, and many mid-career teachers still qualify for public benefits.
To put that in perspective, if school funding for teacher salaries matched 1970 levels, the average pay would be $140,000 a year instead of $65,000 a year. Researchers at FutureEd identified 59 bills across 22 states this year aimed at increasing teacher compensation. Most of them focus on increasing teachers’ base pay. Some of them propose incentives or salary bumps to retain experienced teachers or teachers in hard-to-staff subjects or in underserved schools.
And so far this year, five state bills have been enacted, taking various approaches to raising teacher pay, and that’s really a fluid number. We’ve seen that change throughout the year. These compensation issues are happening amidst a challenging fiscal context. So we know currently, state and district leaders are facing competing tensions in the teacher workforce. So they’re seeing localized teacher shortages persist, increased student learning and mental health needs in the wake of the pandemic, and continued pressure to raise compensation. But at the same time, pandemic relief funds are set to expire soon, and declining student enrollment has impacted many school budgets.
So that brings us to the main guiding question of our discussion today. Within this context, how will state and school systems ensure they have the workforce they need, and how will they pay for it? And so, we’re going to spend time on that idea today with our panelists. Before we shift gears to our panel discussion, because I want to make sure we really maximize our time talking to those folks, I do want to mention quickly a resource that’s relevant to our discussion today.
Last year, our team released the Teacher Compensation Reform Decision Guide; it’s publicly available online. And that tool is meant to support district and state leaders with navigating the complex process of increasing compensation, and we’ll touch on some of the strategies in this guide as we learn from our panelists through the discussion. So we welcome you to take a look. So now, without further ado, I’d like to turn things over to my colleague, Tara, to get us started with our panel. And again, we invite you to offer questions and comments in the chat along the way. Thank you.
Tara Bergfeld:
Thanks, Dana. We are so excited to bring together this group of experts today. Thank you all for joining us. We are joined by Dr. Victor Diaz, one of our colleagues here at WestEd. Vic is an organization development specialist. Prior to joining our team, he worked in public education for over 20 years, most recently as a district administrator leading the human resources department in two Phoenix school districts and serving on the governing board for the Osborn School District. A published researcher, Vic taught high school and middle school ELA and ELD for eight years before teaching at the college level.
Next, we are joined by Dr. Sara Hale, the chief operating officer for Milford School District in Delaware. As COO, Dr. Hale oversees all financial operations within the school district, including finance, payroll, and benefits. In addition, she directs program operations for buildings and grounds, child nutrition, all the day-to-day operational departments of the district.
We’re also joined by Dr. Mark Holodick, who serves as the secretary of the Delaware Department of Education. He has extensive experience in educational leadership, including over a decade as superintendent of the Brandywine School District, and a prior role as a senior leadership specialist at the University of Delaware.
Erin Lair most recently served as superintendent of Baker School District in Oregon, where she led the district to adjust to a higher minimum teacher salary. With 15 years in education as a teacher and administrator, Erin has held positions in Idaho and Oregon school districts and served as a school improvement director for one of Oregon’s midsized education service districts.
And Kelly Meadows is the assistant state superintendent of the Division of Educator Effectiveness at the Maryland State Department of Education. In her role, she oversees educator preparation, licensure, and approval of K-12 private schools. Meadows and her team are engaged in the implementation of Pillar 2 of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, which focuses on developing a high-quality and diverse teacher workforce. We’ll learn more about that later when we talk with Kelly.
So what is considered compensation? There are multiple ways to increase compensation. While increasing base salaries is the most direct way to put more money into every educator’s pocket, the teaching profession as a whole can benefit from multiple approaches to improve compensation. For example, increasing base salaries directly raises teachers’ overall income, making the profession more financially competitive.
Other options include enhancing benefits like health insurance, retirement plans, and paid leave. Offering performance-based incentives or bonuses rewards teachers for excellence and can attract high-quality educators to the profession. Creating and compensating leadership roles like department heads or mentor teachers provides opportunities for career advancement and higher earnings. Implementing housing assistance programs such as subsidies or affordable housing options can reduce living costs and effectively increase teachers’ disposable income.
A 2023 EdWeek Research Center survey found that 6% of district leaders and principals said they provide teacher housing or a housing supplement. Providing tuition remission or loan forgiveness can help reduce the financial burden of education for teachers. We saw several examples of this during the pandemic when districts used ESSER dollars to encourage teachers to obtain additional credentials, such as English learner certification or special education.
So compensation increases can look different based on a district’s or state’s needs to meet workforce demands. Oftentimes, the impetus for teacher compensation reform comes from the state level, as we will discuss in a bit. Other times, district leadership recognizes the need to address critical concerns around retention and staffing. One of our panelists today, Erin Lair, was the superintendent who ushered in a compensation reform for Baker School District, a small district in Eastern Oregon with about 1,700 students, to raise the starting pay for teachers to $60,000 a year.
As highlighted in EdWeek, starting teachers in Baker made about $38,000 on a 16-step schedule. The district adopted a four-tier schedule that skips to the top four tiers of a traditional schedule. Compensation now starts at $60,000, and the ceiling has been increased from 72,000 to 86,000. The district was able to accomplish this change by using a higher-than-average fund balance from funds that were either unappropriated or unspent over the budget year.
Leadership also analyzed their current spending patterns and identified ways to reduce duplicity and build in better and more efficient spending, such as shifting funding for counseling staff into a new state-funded account. They also shifted around some administrative positions and maximized other revenue sources, such as Medicaid, from which they were underclaiming reimbursements. So, given that tee up, Erin, we’re going to start with you. Given your experience restructuring a district’s compensation model, how can school districts’ leaders effectively engage teachers, staff, and taxpayers in a collaborative process to determine a fair and sustainable compensation structure?
Erin Lair:
Good morning. Yes. I think the collaborative word is really key here. And then the other thing is, I just wanted to plug how this is going. We are now two years in a row with not a single licensed teacher position to hire. And so, that’s been really impactful for us on that retention side as much as the recruitment. We don’t have recruitment right now.
Collaborative is huge, and I think that the biggest piece of this is changing our thinking. When I’ve gone into the bargaining table, when I’ve talked to policy leaders, state, regional, there’s a very rooted traditional mindset, and there’s these familiar tropes in teacher compensation that we sort of have pre-boxed ourselves into thinking about, and the conversation needs to open it up and say, “If we were to just start this all over, if we were to think from a blank slate, what would an industry conversation be around the highly trained professionals that are in our district?” So I think that collaborative piece.
The other side of that is, it seems that much of this conversation preemptively happens in the silos of each of those stakeholders that you mentioned. So we have the state conversation that happens around appropriations that is not adjacent to the teacher conversation that’s happening in a state like Oregon. We are a strong union state. So we have our Oregon Education Association, and then you have your regional, your local conversations, and then they kind of all converge at a point where nothing can really change.
So we have preset financial conversations meshed with the dynamics of whatever your local context is, and then we kind of come at odds together, but at a place where we can just be really frustrated but not make change. So I think that that conversation has to come earlier just within our local context. That was a piece of how this shift happened, was I went to our local association before bargaining was even to take place and said, “I have an idea, but you’re going to have to trust on this a bit. We’re going to be out in front, and I don’t know exactly what the ripples are going to be, but let’s try it. We have some financial positionality right now that allows us to maybe launch a little differently and see what happens.”
On the other side of that, you noted that we had a large ending fund balance. It was about 22%, and our plan had been to draw that down in the first two years. But over some of the other things you noted about some strategic, expense-side adjustments, we ended up not tapping into that at all. So I think that that’s where that collaborative conversation comes in. At the state and regional level, that collaboration can look like advocacy, and I think we’ll get to this later in this webinar, advocacy around less restrictive funding.
Every time we get new funding into our district, it comes with very specific parameters. And the thing about salary that’s so challenging is, it is the general fund piece of this pie. So no additional initiative or grant can really touch the comprehensive 85% of your budget that is staffing alone. So that collaborative piece came in. And when you can link arms with each of those stakeholder groups with this kind of a seamless message around simplifying as much as possible a very complex dynamic that is teacher salary, we seem to get there.
And then the last thing I just say is that the universal support for students across this nation is a highly qualified teacher in front of their classroom. So at the end of the day, we can spend exorbitant amounts of money on any number of other interventions or support systems, but unless we have a skilled teacher standing in front of our students, none of that will matter. And so, that’s kind of where our shift in that collaborative framing came from, is we led with this is the universal support for student learning, and we have to start there and then work backwards. So just changing that traditional mindset around bargaining, traditional structures that have existed since the 1800s, and giving ourselves an openness to try something new.
Tara Bergfeld:
Great. Thanks, Erin. Vic, you were an HR chief. How did this work from your perspective?
Victor Diaz:
Yeah. Thanks, Tara. And just to add on to Erin, in my perspective, I was the director of human resources for the Phoenix Elementary School District, Phoenix, Arizona. We’re actually Arizona’s first public schools. And so, you can’t get more traditional than that, and we followed a very similar path. Over the course of five years, I’m going to start with the end, we retained over 90% of our teachers three times and over 95% of our most highly effective teachers.
We also led student learning to a point where we were the largest district in Maricopa County to have all A- and B-rated schools. And it’s no surprise then that we also raised our compensation more than 30%. Our beginning teachers went from about 39K to over 50K. Our average teacher salary got up to about 65K. This was in the middle of the pandemic. This was in Arizona, where the context would be very challenging. And this was also during a time of declining enrollment; we were looking at closing schools.
And so, I think we followed a pretty similar path. We had to be strategic, and we had to start with thinking about our people. This journey for us really started with teacher retention. We knew that we had recruiting challenges, but those were rooted in retention challenges. Our first recruiting effort should always be retaining our most talented staff.
So we strategically took on teacher recruitment with a variety of things like stay interviews and focus groups and surveys. We pulled a lot of data together that gave us several solutions to retention, one of which was compensation. If you ask teachers, “What can we do to make your job better?” they’re going to tell you they want to be paid more. But in the data, it was not just to get paid more. It was more transparency in pay. It was also more predictability in pay.
And so, what we needed to then do is to match that retention strategic work with compensation strategic work that offered participation, an opportunity to be at the table or to be in the room where it happens when we were making key decisions about budgets and about budget priorities. So in that compensation strategy, we didn’t want to play whack-a-mole and do the whole thing of, “Let’s just do this one year at a time and focus on cost of living first.” We wanted and we did make a three-year strategic approach that wasn’t just going to be one and done.
We made a plan with deliverables, with key metrics, with all the different resources that we were going to need to use, and some clear timelines. We saw other districts and the way that they were playing whack-a-mole, and we felt that we could position ourselves to be very competitive in that market if we could offer to folks a better vision for where we were headed over the next three years.
Changing the model was something at the center of what we did too. What we see a lot of is teacher compensation models that are linear. But what we were doing, we were hemorrhaging teachers in years three through eight. So we needed to create a model that actually accelerated growth at a max capacity through years three, five, eight, and 10, and 12 in order to incentivize people staying, and to reward them for staying.
And so, we worked very hard then to make an internally coherent, externally competitive system that did just that, and that has this curve. And because it has that curve, that’s how we got average teacher pay to the level that we were able to get it. That’s how we were to get our beginning teacher pay to the level where we got it as well. It was collaborative. It was strategic. It was playing offense instead of defense with this issue.
Tara Bergfeld:
Great. Thanks, Vic. I’m going to turn it now to my colleague Sarah to introduce our next question.
Sarah Barzee:
Great. Thank you, Tara, and thank you, Erin and Vic. So let’s move all the way across the coast, from the West Coast of Arizona and Oregon all the way over to the East Coast of Maryland and Delaware. In 2021, the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future was passed by the Maryland General Assembly, with the goal of transforming public education in that state to become a world-class education system.
The Blueprint will increase state funding over the next 10 years. And specifically, as it relates to this conversation, it’s intended to elevate the stature of the teaching profession through raising teacher pay, including starting salary of $60,000 by 2026, providing incentives of up to $17,000 for teachers who earn their National Board Certification, and raising expectations at the same time for preparation, induction, and mentoring programs so that, as Vic said, we can not only attract, but also retain the highest-quality teachers.
Joining me today for the next question is Kelly Meadows, assistant state superintendent of the Division of Educator Effectiveness for the Maryland Department of Education, and followed by her will be Sara Hale, the operating officer for the Milford Public Schools in Delaware. So welcome, Kelly. I’d like to start first with you, given that you’re extremely familiar with the work happening around teacher compensation as a result of the Blueprint in your state of Maryland.
We know that, as we’ve heard both in the chat and our panelists so far, in many states over the past few years, including yours, states have passed legislation or policy requiring an increase in teacher compensation, whether that’s through increasing the minimum starting salary, as we heard in Arizona, or, in some cases, providing percent increases across the career continuum to incentivize recruitment.
And while I think everyone on this panel would agree that these are the right goals, they would also wholeheartedly agree that these are also challenges with respect to implementing these policies and these strategies. So I would like to start with you for the first question, and then followed by Sara Hale, and that is, what kind of support can the state provide to school districts as they and the state are working to implement compensation reform? Kelly, please.
Kelly Meadows:
Thank you, Sarah. So Maryland really took the approach of all those things in this massive piece of legislation where salary compensation initiative is one small part of one pillar of this gargantuan piece of reform. And what I’ve heard so far from my colleagues is I’ve heard the term strategic a lot, and I’m going to talk about that too, because I think that… There’s a couple points I want to share first.
I think that states can ensure that the funding that’s associated with these initiatives from the state is strategic and intentional, and aligned with the intention of what we want to happen. And so, I’ll give you an example. So in Maryland, one of the compensation initiatives was a 10% salary increase for all teachers between four years, and this was in preparation to get us to the 60,000 minimum base salary that we’re moving to in 2026.
So the first thing that was done was, $225 million was used to kind of jump-start that from the state, and that was provided over those four years, and LEAs had the flexibility to decide how those four years were going to look. But at the end of those four years, they did have to reach that 10% threshold, and that money would be allocated from the state throughout that process. Understanding that that’s not where it needed to end at that four-year period, the foundation per-pupil fund was increased a certain percentage, 13 percentage points, and a portion of that is used to fund the increase in teacher salaries. So that was a fiscal year.
And then looking forward to full implementation, there’s a number of years where, again, that foundation per-pupil fund is going to be raised a total 49%. So really strategically thinking, how can we use state funding in a very intentional way to meet the goal? So that’s one. I think what we’ve learned in this process is, clearly articulated language and policy is so very critical. It’s so very easy to inadvertently draft policy that is open for interpretation.
And when you don’t want interpretation, then it’s really, really critical that you develop that language in a way that it cannot be misinterpreted. As you can imagine, no statute is perfect. No policy is perfect. So the department has found themselves really spending a lot of time interpreting statute and ensuring that there is standardization across implementation because of those concerns.
And so, that kind of leads me to my third point, which is, I think states need to be willing to pivot. If things need to be revised, if we need to go back to the legislature to make sure that things are clear, or if we’re not seeing the desired results that we wanted based on the data, then I think we have to be willing to revise policy, and with that revision needs to come support for our LEAs who will have to pivot along with us. So I think those are my top three things that I would say a state can do to support school districts while implementing compensation reform.
Sarah Barzee:
Great. Thanks, Kelly. And one quick question, because I see it in the chat. Does Maryland have a statewide salary schedule?
Kelly Meadows:
No, we do not.
Sarah Barzee:
Great. Thank you. So I’m going to turn it over to Dr. Hale, again, chief operating officer in the contiguous district or state of Delaware, and Sara from a different perspective. Clearly, Kelly is speaking from the SEA level. Would love to hear your perspective on the same question with a perspective from the local level.
Sara Hale:
Sure. Thank you so much for the question. Being so close to Maryland, Delaware immediately started hearing about the policy changes, and we knew that we needed to follow suit. So we’ve had similar conversations. From a state perspective, at the local level, what I would say is the same thing that everybody else has said, consistency with regards to the level of funding that we’re receiving, sustainability, making sure that we are entitled to those funds each and every year, and we’re not going to wonder whether or not they’re going to be supported.
And then flexibility. I heard it earlier from one of the other panelists, making sure that the districts have the flexibility with funding to support their teachers in the best way that they can. So I would echo everything that the panelists have said, and the pillars of that would be consistency, flexibility, sustainability for sure.
Sarah Barzee:
Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Hale. So at this point, we’re going to move not quite as far as we did from Oregon and Arizona to Maryland, but we’re going to move to Delaware, where actually Sara is, and then we’re also joined by Dr. Mark Holodick, who serves as the secretary of education in Delaware, but also as the chair of the Public Education Compensation Committee.
So on the screen, you can see a little bit, and we’ll also drop in the chat a link about what happened with the Public Education Compensation Committee. But as Dr. Hale mentioned, Maryland moved, and Delaware moved quickly in the following year during that legislative session of 2022. Delaware began exploring recommendations to both raise starting salaries, but also look at their entire state salary schedule to ensure that Delaware would remain regionally competitive as they too work to attract and retain educators in Delaware.
So in 2022, the assembly passed Senate Bill 100, which required Delaware to convene a Public Education Compensation Committee. And over the course of about a year, that committee was charged with 10 recommendations that would be included in a report to the governor, which was ultimately delivered by the secretary and the department to Governor Carney in November of 2023, and then following that for consideration by the governor to be included in the fiscal year budget of the following year.
So a lot of work has been done there. On the screen, I have the privilege of facilitating the PECC process. And on the screen, you can see those concentric circles. I think Delaware made the progress that it made for looking at this regional competitiveness largely from a very robust and broadly representative stakeholder engagement process, as well as a very data-informed decision-making process, whereby using data to look at the regional competitiveness of each of those employee groups. The PECC and the money group made deliberate and intentional and strategic decisions to move forward with compensation in Delaware.
So with that, I’m going to turn it over and first invite Dr. Holodick from his role, and then turn it back to Dr. Hale. Dr. Hale was also a member of the Public Education Compensation Committee as well as the Subcommittee of School Finance Officers. So, Dr. Holodick, starting with you. We will drop the report as well as the Senate Bill 100 into the chat. But Dr. Holodick, starting with you. With a confluence of factors, enrollment declines, revenue concerns, increasing student needs, what advice do you have for leaders at both levels, again, state and local, to get policymakers on the same page to increase teacher compensation? Dr. Holodick.
Mark Holodick:
Sure. Thank you, Sarah. I think it’s important to note for the folks who are in today’s webinar who maybe aren’t as up to speed on their East Coast geography as they were when they were in middle school and high school geography. Delaware does butt up against the state of Maryland as well as the state of Pennsylvania. So as Kelly just shared from Maryland and Sarah articulated, we were really influenced in Delaware. Although we had been talking for some time about compensation increases, the work that was done, especially in Maryland, really pushed us.
So, Sarah, you mentioned Senate Bill 100, this very large and involved, influential, if you would, stakeholder group made up of legislators, some of which actually sat at the time on the Finance Committee for the state. We had the Office of Management and Budget. The governor’s office was represented. The state teachers’ union was represented. I was selected as chair, and had really the benefit and opportunity of working with these key folks who really asked for a transparent process.
So to answer the question directly, we worked with you, WestEd, to gather regionally comparable data in terms of what educators were actually earning, and beg the question, which of our employee groups, if any, were competitive with our surrounding states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia? Those were the four states we focused on.
And we didn’t just look at teachers and/or paras and administrators. We looked at them plus custodians, bus drivers, school nutrition staff, and beyond. Right? And we were charged with making those recommendations to the governor by November of last year, and happy to say we actually got those recommendations to him almost an entire month in advance, which gave the governor time to really work with his team in terms of building his recommended budget for what is now this current school year.
But I think I answered the question, but to really bring it home, I would say, there were really important conversations and processes that were put in place to ensure that there was clear and timely communication with any and everyone who was not only interested but was in a position to either support or possibly oppose what we were recommending. And what we didn’t want from the start was there to be any kind of action or vote taken either in those meetings or, as I look out my window, at Leg Hall, across the green here. We wanted people to really be well-informed.
And so, the final piece I’ll mention is, as I turn it over to Sarah, she played along with someone who’s actually in the webinar but not on the panel, Chuck Longfellow, and another CFO from Delaware who were really knowledgeable and well-respected. They were part of a behind-the-scenes work group helping prepare for presentations at these large committee meetings, and that process really helped us in terms of our ability to be transparent and communicate effectively. Sarah?
Sarah Barzee:
Thanks, Secretary Holodick. So, Sara Hale, if you would, again, take the local perspective. Again, I had the opportunity to work with you on the larger PECC as well as in that smaller subcommittee. What would you add to what Secretary Holodick has shared? And before Sara answers, just to answer the question, Delaware does have a state salary schedule, since I saw that posed around Maryland. Delaware does have code, and it does have a state salary schedule. So with that, Dr. Hale.
Sara Hale:
Thank you so much. So just to continue what Dr. Holodick said, we looked at a lot more than just teachers. We looked at the entire education employment as a whole and every subgroup. So that was a bigger lift in some respects, and all of those groups play integral parts into our environment. Right? So we looked at data. I think that was the biggest key, is gathering all of that data, and we had a lot of help from WestEd to do that.
And then from the subgroup perspective and the local perspective, in Delaware, we all have our own local collective bargaining units. Some of those are not just for teachers. Some of those are for our custodians and our paraprofessionals and our other subgroups. So trying to balance that and inform the committee was really important about how that works at the local level versus what they could do from an overarching level at the state.
So a lot of those different factors came into play. And I think the key there that was mentioned by Dr. Holodick is just the transparency and trying to be very up-front and honest with all of the stakeholders, who may not know the education funding system like we do, to try to make sure that they had a good understanding out of the gate of what it is that they were asking of local education agencies and how that would impact not just the larger districts, but also some of our smaller districts and their ability to be able to implement the recommendations.
Sarah Barzee:
Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Hale. With that, thank you to all of our panelists. I am going to turn it back to Tara for the $20,000 question around financing these reforms. So, Tara.
Tara Bergfeld:
Thanks, Sarah. So I know we just talked a lot about this and touched on it, but how do school districts pay for this reform? With almost all resource allocation decisions, it comes down to the basics. We look for more revenue, such as through local property tax increases or an influx of state funds. We determine how to cut costs by renegotiating contracts, or in some cases of late, we’re hearing a lot of conversations around consolidating schools to scale down on costs.
There’s that expense trade-off approach where leaders look to determine what can be moved from one item to another in the budget to support a new initiative. In most cases, it’s likely going to be a combination of all three of these approaches, with a holistic review of a district’s budget to rightsize the programming and accommodate a change in the salary schedule for years to come. All of those choices require buy-in from multiple parties: the board, teachers, the community, local funding bodies, and decisions around both scaling down programs and how to use new funds can be difficult and contentious.
So I’m going to turn this next question to, again, the CFO on our panel today, but I would like to welcome our other panelists to respond to this as well, as everybody’s touched this in a different way. So, Sara, just to start with you, when you’re considering how to pay for compensation increases, what political and policy implications do states and school districts need to keep in mind when they are implementing a new pay structure?
Sara Hale:
All right. Thank you so much. I’m looking at your previous slide. None of those things come easily, whether it’s raising revenue or cutting costs or finding those trade-offs to support the initiative, and that goes for pretty much anything. I think this question, what to keep in mind really depends largely on the funding structure for your state and how that impacts public education.
Here in Delaware, the state funds a pretty substantial portion of the public education budget, and that includes 70% of our teachers’ salaries. So there was a great political interest, and you heard Dr. Holodick say there were a number of legislators included in our key stakeholders on the Public Education Compensation Committee, and that’s because there is such a vested interest from the state level, because it is so expensive.
So that can be a factor in the political involvement. It can also depend on the climate and the principles of those different leaders. So navigating them and working with them to understand, and again, have them on board before this kind of moved forward was really, really important, and I would just say that would be equally as important for someone in another state. So that’s a significant factor there.
Sustainability is really a key. We’ve talked about this a couple times today. I don’t think any state wants to be in a position where they would have to either decrease staff or go back and reverse a salary increase in order to accommodate the pay structure. So really having a good economic outlook, understanding what those revenues for your state look like going forward for an undetermined amount of time. Right? So really have a key to understanding that economic outlook and maintaining those revenues.
And then from a local perspective, I would say that compensation increases can be really challenging. We are, by and large, a people business. Right? So the bulk of our budget, I think that Erin touched on that earlier. The bulk of our budget is people. So a swing in one way or the other can really have a great impact on the expense of the district. So, again, depending on the funding structure of your state and whether you’re required to go to referendum vote for operating increases or not.
Here in Delaware, in order to raise local property taxes, we would have to go to referendum for that. I know that that requires a vote of our community, for those who don’t know what referendum may be. But I know that a lot of other states are kind of moving away from that process and advocating for an annual operating adjustment, which would really be helpful in maintaining and keeping up with salary increases or a proposed plan for salary increases.
And then finally, I would just say that collective bargaining agreements are also a major factor in understanding the structure of those bargaining cycles. I’m very careful not to commit us too far out in advance, because you just don’t know what those revenue cycles will look like. So I would say the same from a state perspective, wanting to, again, make sure that sustainability is there and that you’re not going to put yourself in a dangerous situation to not have the funding to support this down the road. So those would be the things that I would keep in mind when implementing a new structure from the Delaware perspective.
Tara Bergfeld:
Great. Before I move to our last question, I just want to see if any of our other panelists wanted to respond to this one before we move forward. Hey, Erin.
Erin Lair:
Yeah. I think just within this question, I just like to underscore, I know Oregon is not alone in that as we have really valid priorities that come across our state’s legislative plate, attaching that to funding that becomes really specific makes it challenging because it’s hard, and somebody else earlier mentioned that, or I think it was in the chat, one size fits all does not work in probably any state very well.
So those who have tackled statewide salaries and things like that, that’s what often comes up, is that the context of our school districts from… In Oregon, we have a district of about six kids up to in the multiple tens of thousands. And so, the less we can attach our financial increases or changes in our fiscal policies within our state to specific, sort of targeted allocation, that’s helpful, because this is a general fund conversation, and there’s no way to get around that.
And so, you can play… And we did a real strategic effort on what I’m calling the least restrictive domino, and any in the financial spaces knows, you start with your restricted funds and work backwards, and hopefully free up some of your general fund. But if our state and federal funding policies had a little bit of that in mind, I think a lot of districts would make good choices in how their programmatic adjustments would be allocated in order to support staffing.
And then the other piece of this that I think has been really profoundly forward in our outcome so far is that all of the pathway efforts, or a lot of states have… There’s a big thing with apprenticeships coming up right now to try to get teachers in the workforce. It really is for naught, unless there’s a financially justifiable reason for people to go into this career.
And what we’ve found is we have really, really strong paraprofessionals that have told us, “I never transitioned to be a teacher, because I was only going to make a couple thousand dollars a year more for 10 years until it became financially justifiable, but I don’t have that long of a career frame to put in.” So by just shifting that starting point to an industry standard, some of those other initiatives suddenly get some legs, and we have some of those other efforts, but that all, again, comes through. We’ve become really targeted and siloed in how we fund education, and I think backing that out a little bit can be really beneficial.
Tara Bergfeld:
Great. Thanks, Erin. I’m going to share one last question, and this is for everyone on the panel. Our last question today: Considering it is impossible to increase teacher compensation without additional state and local revenue, are there any strategies briefly that you would recommend at the state or local level to increase attention on this important topic?
Mark Holodick:
Yeah. This is Mark Holodick. I’ll take a crack at it and say that in this position, I think it’s imperative that I be the voice, if you would, for educators in the state, and talk about how important it is for all educators, not just teachers and paraprofessionals and administrators, but everyone in the educational space that we had referred to earlier, how important it is for them to have a high quality of life, and that if compensation is strong and working conditions are positive and tied into Senate Bill 100 also. There’s work happening now in Delaware around teacher career ladders.
If everyone in the educational space can begin to see a clearer career path, there’s a much better chance that we will be able to retain them, and that it’ll be a lifelong career for them, and I think we all would agree that that’s better for the system. And so, in the various positions that we all sit in, we have an opportunity to share the importance of being competitive, and that if we really want education to be an attractive career, that these are the things we must do.
And then finally, I would say it’s also our responsibility to connect the dots. It’s not just compensation. It’s, as I said, working conditions. It’s strong leadership in buildings, leaders who educators want to work with and for, and tying in the importance of benefits and pension and all of these other things that tie directly into compensation that a lot of people don’t consider, especially new hires, young educators. They might not connect all of that. I think it’s the Department of Education, legislators’, and others’ responsibility to talk about it and ensure that it continues to be a priority.
Sara Hale:
I would totally agree and echo everything that Dr. Holodick said. The one thing that I would just add briefly is, I think it’s important for everyone, not just legislators but everyone, to really understand all of the hats that our education professionals wear in a day’s time, and how impactful they can really be for students. They are a million different things to these kids, and that’s really important in their development and who they will be down the road.
So I think continuing to increase that message and be very clear about the impact that these people have. They spend seven hours a day with these children, and that’s sometimes more than us as parents get to spend with our kids. Right? So it’s important to help people understand all of the different hats and how meaningful they really can be, and investing in that and how important it is.
Victor Diaz:
Yeah. I can jump in here and add just a couple other strategies than what’s being named, but I think we’re all hitting the same sort of nail right on the head. But one of the things that I would say is the ability for… Coming from the LEA’s perspective, from the district perspective, manage what you can manage and be strategic and be proactive about it. There’s far too many HR offices or budget and finance offices that play just a ton of defense.
We receive things all day long, and that is just exhausting. It’s hard to play defense all day. This is an opportunity for us to start to play some offense. And when we play offense, we can be strategic. We can anticipate things. We can build tools that get us well-equipped to respond to things that are coming our way, and it just feels better to be at work every day. Your departments just sit up a little straighter when they know the direction that they’re headed in, and they’re not just constantly responding to that stimuli.
One of the things I share is that if a district wanted to raise their third-grade reading scores over the course of three years, they have a method for doing that. You’re going to have a strategic plan. You’re going to have a budget. You’re going to have resources. You’re going to have point people. You’re going to have timelines and deadlines and all these different pieces.
But when I typically in this role now go and talk to districts or schools, “What are you doing to increase compensation or increase retention?” they look lost. They’re not applying the same logic that they are to this instructional model to the human capital models that they’re using. And so, it’s those same very sets of tools that will help you.
But at the same time, if you were looking at third-grade reading, and you said, “We’re all working already 120 hours a week. We’re all 1.2 FTE already,” you need partners. And I think the work that we did in Phoenix, we relied very much on strategic partners. There was no shortage of people that wanted to do a compensation study for us. And by that, give us a list of all your positions, and give us all the salaries, and we’re going to do mid-mid-max, and we’re going to compare that to everybody else.
Respectfully, I think I could have found a group of fifth graders who could have done that, because that math is about at their level, and most of those documents are public-facing anyway. So the partners that we had helped us to be strategic, helped us to look at things in multiple years, and in ways where the method was as important as where we were trying to get, a method that was collaborative, a method that was very participatory.
And so, it’s just exciting, I think, now to be here at WestEd at a time when this organization is moving in that direction as well in terms of how we can support folks in just getting off of our seats, getting onto our feets, and really taking a stance that we are leaders. We are the cavalry, and we can lead on these issues.
Kelly Meadows:
If I could just add really quickly, I think one of the things in Maryland that we learned was, I can’t imagine the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future passing if we hadn’t recognized, and by we, I mean the governor at the time and the Maryland legislature, recognizing that there were a lot of stakeholder groups that needed to be at the table at a commission, and it took three years for them to come up with the recommendations that eventually were codified as the Blueprint.
And without that buy-in of all of those different groups, and I don’t have time to go through all of the different groups that were at the table, I can’t imagine that it would have passed. And it still only passed because they came in and had a special session to overrule a veto by the governor. So I think that from the very beginning, you’ve got to have the right players at the table, back to the original question, because there is local funding and there is state funding that has to be involved. And if there’s no investment in sustaining that funding, then it’s going to be another unfunded mandate.
Erin Lair:
Tara, just to jump off of what Kelly just said, and one of the comments or questions in the chat around the expansion of the staff-per-student ratio, many of us in the education space can speak to the fact that education is taking on a lot of the structures that used to exist in community partnerships. We used to really advocate for community partners to come alongside our education systems and support our students. And over time, and due to a number of funding constraints in those spaces, education’s sort of where, I’ve said, it all kind of flows back, because at the end of the day, we’re the only structure that can’t say no or can’t articulate that we don’t have the resources to support it.
Other structures adjacent to us, other community partners can say there’s no room at the inn, so to speak. Right? And so, then the education space. So I have also been really encouraging educators to stand at the table and advocate for those adjacent systems and say, “I need our mental health system in Oregon to be funded at a level that can support our students,” because then that would relieve the onus on us as education systems to provide some of that.
So I think one thing that hasn’t quite been brought up is coming and linking arms not to say, “We need more for that, but I need this counter system or this collaborative system to also be supported in order for us to be more effective in our highly qualified spaces, which is student instruction and achievement in those areas, and then have really good, dynamic medical and mental health partners that can help with that side of the student health and safety as well.”
Tara Bergfeld:
Thanks, everybody. We’ve had a lot of really good questions come through on the chat, and it’s been hard for us to decide which ones to address. I think we could spend more time just from the questions in the chat. But one of them I wanted to elevate, it’s a little bit off base of what we’ve been talking about so far, is, how are we thinking about compensation as a lever for improving other aspects of the teaching role?
Thinking about things like creating leadership opportunities that don’t require educators to leave the classroom, enabling more collaboration and less isolation for teachers, differentiating roles for incoming teachers by reducing their workload, providing more support, et cetera. And I will just open that to anybody on our panel. Yes. Thank you, David, for that question.
Erin Lair:
I can jump… Oh, go ahead, Kelly.
Kelly Meadows:
Go ahead, Erin. It’s fine.
Erin Lair:
Just a real quick note, it kind of caught me off guard, but then it was exciting. I had a principal that always loved teaching, and that said she became an administrator more from a financial decision, that that was necessarily where she was. And with some of the shifts in compensation, I’ve had future administrators say that they may just stay in the classroom a little bit longer. Now, it creates a little bit of a challenge on the other end, but it’s exciting to hear some of those conversations.
And I think pushing that professionalism via compensation back into the classroom a little bit, that we’re valuing that space, because then it does somewhat become a conversation around calendar and all those things that get thrown at us, that there gets to be a real dynamic conversation around where skills best suit. So I would say that not everyone’s looking for that leadership trajectory necessarily, or finding those other things within the building that have that teacher leadership lens, but the financial holdback has pushed them into some other places.
So we had some really neat conversations with about 10-year educators that had been looking for the admin track that are now kind of rethinking their timelines, and those students are really going to benefit in a lot of ways in those classrooms.
Tara Bergfeld:
Okay. I want to answer more questions, but I have to be mindful that we have one minute left. So, Dana, would you like to close us out?
Dana Grayson:
Absolutely. I just want to thank our panelists again for just engaging in this rich discussion and sharing their experiences. And also, thank you to our panel moderators. I know that we could talk about this for hours more, and we really just appreciate all the time folks have taken. Danny, I know you had hoped to also push out the link to our short survey. We would love to hear from you. That will appear as you leave the webinar.
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