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11.21 teacher pay chart.pdf

Two unprecedented teachers’ contracts approved by the ISD 2142 school board between 2002 and 2004 pushed salaries for the district’s senior teaching staff to the highest levels in the state of Minnesota, and have played a major role in the district’s dramatic financial slide.

Based on a review of 314 teacher contracts from school districts across Minnesota, ISD 2142’s pay scale for senior teachers puts it among the top 20 districts in the state. On average, a teacher at the top of the pay scale in the St. Louis County Schools earns more than that same instructor in Edina or Wayzata, and much more than that same instructor in places like Rochester, Duluth, or Hermantown. The contract data was provided by the Minnesota School Boards Association, which tracks teacher contract settlements and provides information on individual contracts as well as statewide averages.

When compared with senior teachers working in other small communities in rural Minnesota, the pay gap is especially stark. Among the smallest rural districts, which primarily serve communities of under 1,000 population, the average teacher with a four-year degree earns $41,166 at the top of the salary schedule. That same teacher in ISD 2142 earns $51,752, or 26 percent more. That same small town teacher with a master’s degree tops out at $46,771 on average, while in ISD 2142, it’s $59,488. Actual teacher salaries statewide and in ISD 2142 are higher today than these numbers suggest, since they reflect the 2005-07 teacher contracts. More recent data for ISD 2142 was unavailable from the MSBA.

The remarkable pay gap is only apparent among senior teachers in ISD 2142. Beginning teachers in the district start out in the low to mid-$30,000 range, a rate of pay very comparable to the majority of districts in the state.

Two contracts set the stage

While the district’s financial problems are the result of a number of factors, including declining enrollment and flat state funding levels, no single factor has had as dramatic an impact as two back-to-back teacher’s contracts that pushed pay for senior teachers in ISD 2142 from slightly above the statewide average to near the top. As recently as the 2002-2003 school year, a senior ISD 2142 teacher with a four year degree topped out at $42,174. By the next year, that same teacher’s pay had jumped to $50,234, an astonishing 19 percent increase. Teachers with a master’s degree saw their pay jump from $46,565 in the 1999-01 contract year to $54,387 in the next contract and $58,092 in the following two-year deal. Over a five-year period, pay for senior teachers in ISD 2142 jumped fully 25 percent. Over that same period, pay for senior teachers across the state increased an average of 11.1 percent— or well under half the rate of increase enjoyed by teachers in ISD 2142.

Had the district held the line on pay increases to the statewide average, the district would have saved more than $6,000 annually per senior teacher. Given the number of senior teachers in the district, the financial impact of these two exceptional contracts has been more than $700,000 per year. And since pay increases build cumulatively, the actual financial impact worsens over time. Over the five years since they were approved, these two contracts have cumulatively drained millions of dollars from the district’s general fund balance, forced painful cuts in programming, kept outdated buses on the road, and have now left school closings and major layoffs on the table. District officials now say that without approval of an $80 million capital bond to restructure the district, it likely won’t survive.

A method to the madness?

The first big spike in teacher pay in ISD 2142 occurred in the 2001-03 contract, as an effort by then-Superintendent Don Langan to reward teachers with advanced degrees. “The 2001-03 contract was a radical departure from the 1999-01 contract,” said Langan, noting that the contract eliminated two to three lanes in the salary schedule, through which teachers with only baccalaureate degrees could receive pay increases. “It severely limited the salary amounts for staff in the first ten to fifteen years with only a BA,” said Langan.

Board member Zelda Bruns, who represents the Orr attendance area, and former board member Liz Johnson, who represented Cherry, confirmed Langan’s account of the 2001-03 contract talks.

“If you had reached the top step but not moved past your BA, your salary was frozen,” recalled Bruns, adding that Langan proposed it as an incentive for staff to further their education.

Johnson said she balked at the increase, which she considered too rich for the district. “I thought we shoud have frozen everyone’s pay, including the administrtators,” she said.

While the 2001-03 contract limited increases for some, it provided major salary gains—a total of 17 percent at the top of the scale— for teachers with master’s degrees. It is a type of contract used by a number of districts in the state, particularly wealthier ones, to encourage teachers to further their education and expertise.

But Langan’s initiative was short-lived, in part because teachers at the baccalaureate level complained they had missed out on the pay raises given to those with advanced degrees. As both sides met to iron out the next contract, the talks resulted in a reversal of the contract changes Langan had earlier engineered, which had limited some automatic step and lane increases, while at the same time, boosting pay on the bachelor’s degree side of the salary schedule by an extraordinary 19 percent to allow those teachers to “catch up” with the gains received by those with advanced degrees in 2001-03. At the same time, the contract awarded teachers on the master’s degree side an additional 6.8 percent increase, on top of the 17 percent pay hike in the prior settlement.

But before a final settlement on the 2003-05 contract, Langan was essentially ousted by the board. According to Langan, the final settlement was not his creation, but that’s disputed by board members and former Superintendent Dan Mobilia, who was brought on to finish the teacher negotiations. “When I took over, that contract was already set in stone,” said Mobilia. “We focused on trying to control health care costs at that point,” he said.

Mobilia acknowledged that the sizable back-to-back salary increases put teacher pay in the district “right on the top” compared to other districts in the state. “It got a little bit out of hand. That’s a major part of the problem.”

However the two contracts came about, the cumulative impact sent a teacher’s contract that had consistently paid ISD 2142 teachers about five percent above the statewide average, into the company of the highest-paying districts in the entire state— a development which has clearly contributed to the district’s sudden financial slide.

District officials surprised

District administrators and representatives of the district’s teachers’ union were somewhat surprised at how the district stacks up in terms of salaries. Business Manager Kim Johnson said she has examined the contract information on the MSBA’s website before, but was under the impression that the district’s salaries were more in the middle.

Although Bruns said she was aware that the district paid its teachers well, she did not realize how wide the discrepancy was between ISD 2142 schools and other outstate schools.

That may be because district officials have frequently looked to the Virginia and Hibbing School Districts for comparison. Those two districts are also in the top 20 when it comes to salaries for senior teachers. In fact, Hibbing is in the top ten for pay out of the 314 districts reporting.

Johnson said the high wages in Hibbing and Virginia do put pressure on ISD 2142 to pay more than other parts of the state. “We’ve lost good teachers to Virginia because of it,” she said.

Still, ISD 2142’s base contract now provides higher salaries for senior teachers than any of the other Iron Range districts, including Grand Rapids, Ely, Chisholm, and Eveleth-Gilbert.

And the district’s top teaching salaries are well above other neighboring districts outside the Iron Range. In the South Koochiching-Rainy River district, for example, teacher pay (as of 06-07) topped out at $49,600 with a master’s degree, or $10,248 a year less than in ISD 2142. A Cloquet teacher with a four-year degree topped out at $40,017, or $11,758 less than in ISD 2142.

Dave Fazio, president of Teachers Local 331, noted that teachers in the district had for the most part done without large salary increases. “We’ve had years with freezes or very modest increases,” he said, citing several occasions when teachers accepted increases of less than one percent. But even a zero percent increase can be deceptive because the salary schedule’s built-in lanes and steps provide automatic increases ranging from two to three percent for qualifying teachers.

While Fazio acknowledged that 2142 teachers are paid more than some of their peers at outstate schools such as Littlefork-Big Falls, he said teachers pay at 2142 is comparable to pay at Virginia and Hibbing, districts of similar size to 2142 in terms of enrollment.

District officials point out that salaries are only one part of a teacher’s compensation package, and Johnson said ISD 2142 has avoided some other costs, like retiree health insurance, that have proven to be a major liability for some school districts. And the district’s teachers, in the last contract, did agree to a change in the district’s health care plan, which district officials say is saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That change, however, only came about after more than a year of tough negotiations, during which ISD 2142 was the last district in the state to settle.

Can it be fixed?

Understanding how the district got itself into its current predicament is valuable, but fixing the problem may not be easy. While district officials and school board members have felt the pressure by some in the public on the issue of salaries, they have been reluctant to make the case for concessions. Superintendent Charles Rick has pushed hard to limit pay increases, and pay hikes for teachers in the district have been limited since his hiring four years ago. The district has also trimmed the teaching significantly since Rick’s tenure began.

While the legacy of the 2001-2005 contracts has created major financial challenges, undoing any of the damage would likely be tougher still.

“You are where your are, it’s pretty hard to go back,” said Rick. “For me, I’m just trying to deal with it.”

But other districts have sought and received pay concessions from teachers and support staff. When the Chisholm School District slipped into Statutory Operating Debt several years ago, it turned to teachers for some relief— and teachers agreed to changes that reduced pay and helped Chisholm, in combination with passage of an operating levy, work its way out of financial crisis.

As of the 2006-07 contract year, teachers in Chisholm earned over ten percent less than teachers in ISD 2142, as well as Virginia and Hibbing. Even so, teachers in Chisholm still enjoy salaries significantly above the statewide average for similarly-sized districts.