How I See It - Raising teachers’ salaries is a must

Leslie Gredler Culpeper
Published: May 2, 2008

I agreed with your editorial about the budget until you criticized last year’s teacher raises. Salaries were improved for two simple reasons — recruitment and retention. Culpeper is hiring almost 100 new people each year. Competition for teachers is great and has been for at least 15 years. It is a local, state and national problem. It will continue until more individuals choose teaching as a profession. Even though working conditions are also an issue with teachers, salary and benefits recruit and retain.
It has been obvious that the BOS members talk out of both sides of their mouths.

They tell us that the School Board runs the schools but actually they want to do it. They say the School Board needs to decide how to use their funds but then tells them what they should and should not do.

This year they wanted to be sure school employees didn’t get a raise.

So what if classrooms can’t be filled with qualified individuals. It isn’t the BOS’s problem.

Before you think teachers should have merit pay or pay for performance, stop! Culpeper could never afford it. School divisions which tried have not been able to maintain it.
The teachers’ salary scale has been manipulated depending on funds available. Over the years teachers have been frozen a few times. They have also moved experience steps. When the scale wasn’t improved, the scale became less competitive. The steps on the scale were decreased to help teachers get to their top salary sooner but that failed since it took me 29 years to get there. One year funds were taken from the top salaries and given to the beginning steps to make them more competitive so the schools could recruit. Teachers of different years of experience were put together on the same steps and some new hires were put at a lower step than what their experience suggested. All of this has been going on for almost 15 years. As a result, there were school employees that were incorrectly placed and had been losing money over several years working for Culpeper. This impacted recruitment and retention.

Last year Dr. Cox corrected the teachers’ salary scale. People were finally put where they belong. But now that the BOS made it clear that the School Board should not give raises, they do not plan to give a step increase. In order to prevent having teachers of zero and one year of experience on the same step, the starting salary will be lowered. That will affect recruitment. Unless everyone in our regional area freezes teachers’ salaries, the teachers’ scale will probably not be competitive at any point.

The school employees didn’t create the growth but must deal with the impact. Next year teachers will have no raise, pay more in taxes, pay at least $90 more a month for the same health plan, possibly have higher teacher/pupil ratios, and continue to have fewer funds to run their classrooms. Every year teachers pay for things in their classroom. This year we paid for more. Next year may be even more.

Teachers can’t keep doing it. PTOs are tapped out. Parents are overwhelmed by all the fund raisers. The two new schools are needed because the schools need to unpack and have some breathing room. Qualified school personnel must be recruited and retained.

Leslie Gredler is a resident of Culpeper and past president of the Culpeper Education Association.