By Sasha Elenko, Co-Content Editor
When it comes to teacher pay in the Vashon Island School District (VISD), much of the discontentment — which is so often discussed in the abstract — is actually a reflection of issues with state funding, rather than district funding.
Specifically, teachers know their baseline salary is low, compared to other local districts. Yet that salary is determined by the state budget.
The baseline salary for any teacher is determined from three factors: level of schooling received, years of employment within their current school district and total years of teaching experience.
For example, a teacher with a bachelor’s degree who has never taught before will earn a $35,700 baseline, which is the lowest baseline salary in Washington State, while a teacher who has a Ph.D. and has been teaching with any given school district for 16 years or more will earn a $67,288 baseline. That’s the maximum baseline.
Under the Washington State constitution, it is the paramount duty of the state legislature to amply fund basic public education. In 2012, in the case McCleary et al. v. State of Washington, the state Supreme Court ruled that this mandate had not been met, and this ruling has been upheld and enforced to date. The state has been held in contempt by the court and has now reached over $60 million in fines. Currently, the state legislature is considering three proposals for education funding put forward by Governor Jay Inslee, House Democrats and Senate Republicans.
“Teachers in Washington State in general are just not making a very good salary to start out with,” Glenda Berliner, Vashon Education Association (VEA) co-president and Chautauqua Elementary School teacher, said. “If you compared it to New York, it’s very different.”
Beyond the baseline salary determined by each state, any additional pay is up to individual school districts. The biggest example of additional pay is the Time, Responsibility and Incentive (TRI) compensation.
“That’s an extra pay that districts bargain for,” Sarah Hamill, Vashon Education Association (VEA) co-president and Chautauqua Elementary School teacher, said. “It comes from our professional development that we do after school and before school.”
In the process of collective bargaining, representatives for VEA meet with VISD administrators once every four years and decide on the TRI rate — the percentage by which each teacher’s salary is increased at the end of each year.
Accordingly, teachers who earn a higher baseline salary will earn a higher TRI compensation.
On top of the predetermined TRI compensation, teachers have the opportunity to make bonus pay through extracurricular and co-curricular activities, such as school sports or clubs, or by taking on additional professional development.
“I get paid a little bit more because I’m doing Spanish in my class, so I have meetings that I have to go to to coordinate the Spanish program,” Hamill said. “[Also,] if you sign up to go to professional development over the summer, they’ll pay you to do that.”
There are also some more obscure ways for teachers to earn extra pay.
“[When] teachers are sick, and there are no more [substitute teachers], if you give up your planning period and take on a class, you can get paid for that,” Hamill said.
While differences in pay between colleagues can result from a number of factors, it is important to note that teacher pay in Washington State is never based on quality of teaching. This is because in Washington there is a general agreement that there is no way to objectively evaluate the quality of teaching. Other states, however, use student test scores to determine teacher pay.
According to Berliner, this can put some teachers in an awkward position. For example, an art teacher who doesn’t administer a standardized test to his or her students would have no direct means of being evaluated by the district. So instead, they would evaluate her performance based on how students performed on tests for a different teacher’s class.
“The union in Washington has fought that back, and we have been successful so far [in] not having that tied to [teacher] salary,” Berliner said.
However, there is one exception.
“There’s no incentive for being [a better teacher, unless] a teacher wants to go and get their National Boards [Certification],” Hamill said.
The National Board Certification is awarded by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to teachers who they determine to be highly qualified. Teachers who have earned their so-called “National Boards” earn an additional stipend from the federal government.
While the baseline salary in Washington State remains inadequate by many people’s standards, teachers are generally content with the additional pay granted by VISD.
“Every teacher would say ‘I don’t get paid enough for what I’m doing,’” Hamill said. “But people are very happy with the amount of gains they made on the last contract.”