School Board Chairman At-Large Milt Johns is proposing a study to evaluate the current pay scale for teachers and salaried educators, in order to determine if action should be taken to alter the system.
The compensation study proposal is listed on the agenda for the May 16 School Board meeting.
“Mainly it’s just a matter of we haven’t had a review of our compensation system as least as long as I’ve been on the Board,” Johns said in a phone interview.
In this endeavor, Johns would proceed cautiously through the forming of a panel.
“The superintendent would put together a panel of stakeholders and potentially come up with recommendations for change,” Johns said.
He wants the panel to include, “a broad cross-section of people who are affected,” such as teachers, parents, senior staff, administrators and perhaps board members, while avoiding, what he calls, “group think.”
If the panel is approved, it would look at alternative systems and evaluate the positives and negatives of the current step system. Then according to the recommendation of the panel, the School Board could decide to amend the current compensation system.
“Does adequately allow for proper compensation?” is one question Johns would like the potential panel to explore.
Johns said the panel would have to take a lengthy period of time to thoroughly study the issue, perhaps a full school year.
He also said that the conversation surrounding the decision to provide a step increase to educators for FY 2012-13 brought up some possible inequities in the system.
“I don’t know if adequately reflects the kind of compensation system we should have to do right by our employees," Johns said. “In my personal opinion, we would have more flexibility if we had fewer grades and bands within those grades; a band rather than a step scale."
However, Johns admits that it is not just up to him, and perhaps the Board will not even move ahead on the recommendation to conduct a study. He also recognizes the need to stay competitive with the other school systems in Northern Virginia.
Explaining the types of inequities he sees in the current compensation system, Johns said, “A lot of the complaints (the School Board) had heard was, ‘We don’t want a two percent raise. We want a step,'’’ but he countered that for some educators, such as non-tenured teachers and those at the top of the scale, a two percent raise is more than what they would be receiving under the step increase.
And while he has not specifically suggested a merit-based system, he said it is something upon which he would leave to the panel to reflect.
"The best teacher and worst teacher get the same raise. There are very few enterprises where the best performer and the worst performer gets the same raise,” Johns said.
While he admits that teachers do not teach to for the money, but for the love of teaching, he nonetheless believes that raises could be a motivating factor for educators.
He also said that he would recommend that raises would “not be strictly tied to S.O.L. scores.”
Johns is proposing the panel in a year when Prince William County educators, who fought for their step increase, have become more active in campaigning about issues of compensation.
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