When the state legislature decided to abandon the state salary allocation model (SAM), my work as a local association president became significantly harder.  Now, my local teachers association is responsible for negotiating salaries with our school district.  I’m sure that this happens in places all around the country, but to be fair, I’ve never experienced this as a teacher in Washington.

And now it’s happened.

And I’m feeling additional stress and responsibility.

Especially as a leader who is also a full time teacher/coach and who has no expertise in crafting a salary scale.  

Oh, and that pressure-it’s real. The 151 certificated staff who work for our district are depending on the team–but I’m the leader of the team, so inherently the pressure’s on me.  My colleagues- they’re worth fighting for. Kim spends time at lunch, after school, and on weekends preparing students for their SkillsUSA competition (by the way- a few students earned a trip to Nationals, which means that Kim will spend more time facilitating preparation and a week out of her summer with students). Ryan spends nearly every Spring Break chaperoning students on an overseas field trip. This is time away from his family but it provides his students with an opportunity to leave the confines of our small town and see the world. Kim and Ryan deserve fair compensation for their work. So does Kyla, who is married with two children, and who wants to purchase her first house and Katie, who just purchased hers. Both teachers are finishing up their 4th year of teaching, and both deserve a raise for the valiant and quality work they’ve put in crafting English curriculum for the first time this year (both were Social Studies teachers who agreed to teach some ELA courses this year).  Their students are engaged and demonstrating strong analytical, reading, and writing skills. 

I want to keep them working for our students and in our community. I have a real vested interest in retaining and attracting quality educators to our district. I want my children and your children to have supported, dynamic, and fairly compensated educators in their classrooms. I want to work in an environment where teachers feel recognized for their work. But how do we even go about creating a salary model that reflects what the teachers value and what the district values?  Maybe the better question is- what are our values in this system and are those the same values that district administration hold when crafting a schedule? As I make my rounds to each of the buildings in our district, I’ll be probing at values in order to nail down what must be reflected in a salary schedule.

I’m not completely flying blind.  Our local association executive team is ready and willing to work and to maneuver this new “opportunity.”  Our state association (the WEA) has assigned a representative to us to help as needed. But I’ve always been that concrete-sequential gal who has to set up the header/footer and put her name on the paper before I even start writing the essay, so the task feels especially daunting.  Starting seems to be the biggest challenge.

To add to that tension, no district wants to start first.  Because if your district’s the first to nail down a salary schedule then you’re either the exemplar or the model of “what not do”. So there seems to be hesitancy on which of our local districts is going to make the first move. Yet, making the first move is also important. Teachers want to know next year’s salary as soon as possible. This knowledge empowers them to make decisions about their finances and labor. If a neighboring district is offering a significantly higher salary under their locally negotiated schedule and that district is close in proximity to home then it’s a real possibility that the teacher will want to seek employment in the closer district that pays more. While I’m a firm believer that a school culture drives retention, I also recognize that for some teachers, the trade off of an additional $15,000 might be the impetus to move to another district. I don’t want to feel competitive with the neighboring districts, but I can’t help but feel that this system is creating this exact scenario.

So the rubber hits the road this spring as our local, like so many others across the state, works with our district to create a salary schedule that mirrors our values and fairly compensates our educators.  This is a tenuous balance: we want to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars while cognizant that schools have been granted via the State Supreme Court and funding in legislative action, an increase in wages.  This is delicate work not to be taken lightly. Trust that local association presidents, particularly in small districts like mine, are shouldering this work and feeling the heaviness of this responsibility.  This is the weight of 151 salaries, 151 families, and 151 colleagues on your back.

And this is real.

And has serious consequences.