Teacher Raises For All or Just the Really Good Ones?
This blast e-mail from HPISD just hit the inbox. I think it’s great that we’re giving raises and all but I say we spice it up and vote on who gets the cash. You know, one teacher should get a $50,000 raise and another, the kind that doesn’t seem to match the excellence theme, gets just a few bucks. Now that’s fair.
The HPISD School Board voted yesterday to give all HPISD employees a 3.5 percent salary increase.
The HPISD School Board approved a starting teacher’s salary of $45,530, which puts HPISD among the top-paying districts in the Metroplex. The trustees also raised the stipend for teachers with master’s and doctorate degrees by $500 per year, making the new stipends $2,500 for a master’s degree and $5,000 for a doctorate degree.
5 Comments to “Teacher Raises For All or Just the Really Good Ones?”
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I am glad the teachers are getting raises, but I do not care that we are one of the higher paying districts for 1st-year teachers. I want us to be one of the higher paying districts for teachers with 10, 15 and 20 years of experience. We always seem to be waving this starting teacher banner. Meanwhile, only 4 teachers that my 3 kids had in elementary are still with the district and all of my kids are still in school.
I guess my experience is opposite. Only 3 of the 11 elementary teachers my kids had have left the district. Why did those teachers leave? Pregnancy.
I know one that should have left a long time ago but seems to be waiting for retirement instead. The principal apparently is waiting for the problem to fix itself. That teacher gets the 3.5% raise just like the competent and the excellent teachers.
Maybe it’s hard to measure quality for purposes of merit pay (or “Merritt” pay, like the post suggests), though corporations do it every day. But the district should eventually catch on to incompetence.
The rap on parents here is that we complain a lot so the schools take complaints with grains of salt. My experience has been that few complain, at least in the lower grades. HPISD is a home on the range, where seldom is heard a discouraging word. People have invested big-time in living here for the schools, so everything - rather than almost everything - must be great. The stakes are too high to think otherwise.
Sorry to rant. I’ll go take my Prozac.
James, only one was pregnant. Maybe, they should get bonuses for sticking around? Save some for me, anon.
My son is going into 10th grade and NONE of his elementary teachers are still in the district, this includes home room and specials teachers.
Some were good, some were not and the best one “retired” from the public system and moved to a private school.