April 4, 2018 at 5:30 p.m.
Teachers see pay bump under new contract
The raises, which apply to most of the district's teachers, were negotiated in September as part of a 2016-2017 contract that the school board finalized that same month, Superintendent Shawn Price said.
He said the teachers' union approved the contract on its first day of negotiations, showing just how popular the model is to both educators and administrators who used it for the second year in a row.
Teachers' union President Stacy Kirk was unavailable for comment.
Retroactive to July 1, the new contracted enacts $44,640 in total salary increases among all district teachers for the year, according to the contract. Price said the average raise per teacher is 2.5 percent.
But not all teachers qualify for those raises.
For starters, only those teachers who were hired before or during the 2015-2016 school year and have worked in the district at least 120 days are eligible, because it takes a while for evaluations, the document states.
Also, there is the issue of effectiveness.
The contract specifies that raises are based 67 percent on each teacher's ability to meet his students' academic needs and only 33 percent on experience. In other words, teaching performance is paramount.
Teachers whom administrators' determine to be ineffective or needing improvement in their teaching effectiveness are ineligible for raises of any amount.[[In-content Ad]]
