Teacher Contract Reopened!

The title above is deliberately provocative. Such is a possible effect of recent legislative action. In a widely-reported story, both houses have approved a bill raising salaries for beginning teachers to $27,000 for the 2006-07 school year, and $30,000 the following year. The state has promised to "cover the difference." Unfortunately this creates salary compression at the lower steps of many teacher contracts, such that some teachers employed for a few years will earn less than brand-new teachers. An article in the Portland Press-Herald states:

Three-quarters of the 233 school districts in Maine have minimum salaries below $30,000. Forty-two percent have minimums below $27,000, according to the state Department of Education.

If there's such a thing as a provocation, this is it. We can argue about salaries and compensation and whether teachers are poorly, fairly, or well compensated. To my mind, that's a separate issue from this, which is the legislature taking action which will cause trouble for nearly every school district. It truly does have the potential of re-opening every teacher contract.

Links to news stories here, and here. (All links and quotes are from MDOE Education News.)

From the (Brunswick) Times-Record:

The vote was 76-to-68 in the House and 18-to-16 in the Senate. Those who voted against the pay hike said they were doing so not to deny the lowest-paid teachers a raise, but out of fear that the move would force local school boards to increase pay at every level.

"This bill will set a new minimum, and the minimum becomes the zero step on the salary schedule," said Dale Douglass of the Maine School Management Association, representing superintendents throughout the state.

He predicted there would be pressure to open existing teacher contracts, saying the bill takes away local control of salaries. "It's intruding on the local collective bargaining process by enforcing a base salary that wasn't arrived at locally," Douglass said.
...
[Education Commisioner Susan] Gendron, who said she was "ecstatic" at the passage of the bill, said it would not force the reopening of existing teacher contracts.

"This does not open up contracts," she said, and over time, higher teachers salaries would be part of what's paid for under the state's school aid formula — Essential Programs and Services — where the state ultimately will pick up 55 percent of the total statewide cost of public K-12 education.