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Teachers in Jordan School District will have a choice between old and new after the district's school board votes on a major overhaul of its salary system Tuesday.
The option for teachers to remain in the status quo was announced Friday in response to midcareer educators who say proposed salary changes would hurt their wallets over time.
"We did not want teachers to feel anxious about what was going to happen," said Janice Voorhies, president of the Jordan Board of Education.
Voorhies said the board plans to move forward with its changes, which would lift the district's starting salary to $40,000 and offer across-the-board raises. The proposal would also end the practice of capping pay raises after 15 years in exchange for smaller annual salary increases — known as "steps."
The proposal was accepted last week by the Jordan Education Association, union President Vicki Olsen said, despite reservations by some members.
"This is a good plan and it's a good starting point," Olsen said. "We start with this, and now we'll make it even better."
Teachers who begin and end their careers under the new system, Voorhies said, will see larger lifetime earnings. But the proposal generated pushback from teachers with roughly 10 or more years in the classroom, who say they lose money under the more incremental system without the benefit of years at higher entry-level pay.
Voorhies said after the current proposal is approved for next year, the district will begin work on a second proposal for the 2018-2019 school year and beyond.
"We discovered that we have a hollow place with some teachers, a small percentage," Voorhies said. "We have already started to discuss what we can do to address that."
The board of Canyons School District — which separated from Jordan in 2009 — will also vote Tuesday on a salary package that lifts entry-level pay to $40,000. And like Jordan, Canyons plans to lift its salary cap and consolidate salary schedules, known as "lanes," into a single system that rewards teachers based on years in the classroom and education levels.
"The single-lane salary schedule also will make it possible for teachers to continue to earn more throughout their careers," said Canyons spokesman Jeffrey Haney.
But in Granite School District, administrators plan to retain their use of lanes and salary caps, while boosting district pay by 11.67 percent. The district intends to fund the raises through a $16 million property tax increase, which is estimated to cost between $75 and $100 each year for a $250,000 home.
Granite Education Association President Susen Zobel said union members are voting on the proposal this week, but she anticipates it will be ratified.
"It really has raised morale in every classroom around the district," she said, "because it certainly shows that the district recognizes the value of their teachers."
Zobel said that while the trend away from salary caps may appeal to some, the actual numbers don't work out for most teachers.
"It looks better," she said. "But it doesn't actually provide more money."
Instead of smaller raises to fund perpetual steps the average teacher won't reach, Zobel said, instructors in Granite see larger sums each year and attainable pay levels.
"It gets you to the top faster and you get to stay there longer," she said, "which sometimes is hard for veteran teachers to understand."
Granite's next school board meeting will be held May 2, and Zobel said teacher pay should be finalized at that time.
"As long as we ratify it," she said, "it should go through."
Jordan's proposal to lift entry-level salaries to $40,000 set off what many Salt Lake County educators privately describe as an "arms race" as schools jockey for position in the face of a statewide teacher shortage.
And Granite's 11.67 percent pay hike is being described in part as a "market-based" adjustment to maintain competition with its neighboring school districts.
The arms race has extended to St. George, where Washington County School District is looking at its own proposal to lift entry-level pay to around $40,000.
"We are serious about providing great career opportunities for educators in southern Utah," district spokesman Steven Dunham said. "We are aggressively recruiting teachers and want them to know of the many opportunities we have to offer."
Salary negotiations in Salt Lake City School District are ongoing, a spokesman there said, and details are not yet available.
In Jordan School District, Olsen said the negative response from midcareer educators caught union and school district leaders off guard. But she added that applying the broad strokes of a salary plan to the circumstances of individual educators can be complicated.
"When you're negotiating for approximately 2,700 teachers," Olsen said, "you can't make them all happy."
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