How would you like to earn $10,000 a year more?
Sounds kind of like those hand-lettered signs you see at stop lights, right?
But freshman Rep. Mike Winder, R-West Valley, has such a plan for Utah public school teachers who have two rare qualifications:
- They are among the best teachers in the state.
- And they’re willing to teach in the poorest, most challenged schools, K-12.
Winder’s HB212, introduced Thursday, is an incentive program aimed at getting the best teachers into the places they are needed most – poor and troubled schools with struggling students.
The bill is complicated.
So Winder was kind enough to simplify it for me:
- Through various measurements, about 150 teachers could qualify each year.
- They would qualify through showing “growth” in their students. Various measures would be used, but not the students’ grades, like A, B, or C.
- On average, the kids would have to “grow” 70 percent in various educational areas.
- The teachers would have to be teaching in a “high poverty school,” which have their own measurements to be in that class – where 20 percent of the students are in generational poverty and where 70 percent of the students qualify for free or subsidized lunches.
The first year a teacher qualified for the program, he or she would get a $5,000 bonus; the second year of qualification, $6,000, and so on up until the sixth year of qualification, where the teacher would get a $10,000 bonus.
The teacher could stay qualifying, year after year, getting $10,000 more each year over their otherwise base pay.
Winder’s bill costs $650,000 – an ongoing expense every year.
Now, that may be a tough cash commitment for lawmakers to make, as each year they struggle just to pay for the number of new students coming each Fall.
This session, for example, it will take $68 million of state funds to pay for the estimated 60,000 new students.
But Winder is no newcomer to Capitol Hill politics, even if the former West Valley City mayor is new to the House.
He already has 21 co-sponsors (it takes 38 votes to pass the House); along with three members of House GOP leadership.
And the Senate sponsor is Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, the past Senate budget chair and the new chair of the Public Education budget committee.
If Winder can get part or all of the $650,000 price tag in the public education budget bill – he’s more than halfway home.
This is how it would work:
Let’s say there is a top teacher at Skyline High School on Salt Lake County’s East Bench. By and large, these are achieving students, with parents in their corner. Skyline is not a “poverty” school.
That teacher could transfer to Kearns High School, meet the growth goals, and make $5,000 extra.
If the teacher stays at Kearns, or moves to another “poverty” school, she could move up the bonus ladder each year until after six years she’s making $10,000 more.
“As it is now a new teacher who wants to stay in the profession just moves up the regular pay ladder or has to go into administration,” to make more money, says Winder.
But a $5,000 bonus for a new teacher “is a pretty big pay hike” – 15 percent or above.
Winder said this past year Granger Elementary School in his district saw a 50 percent turnover in faculty.
“That can’t be sustained,” he added.
HB212 is not all the answers to the state’s troubled school system – where Utah ranks last in per-pupil spending in the nation.
The Our Schools Now citizen initiative movement is aimed at asking voters to raise their own personal income tax rates for schools – bringing in $750 million a year – something that GOP Gov. Gary Herbert and Republicans in the Legislature don’t want to do.
“There are many other areas where we need to improve” the funding and management of Utah schools, said Winder.
“There’s a lot more to do. But this is an important step.”
For one thing, he says, “this is market-based.”
Teachers would choose to move to a needy school. They would be the best of the best teachers. And year after year their work would be measured, as their challenged students did better and better.
His bill is backed by the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, the United Way, the International Welfare Reform Commission; and Thursday afternoon the Utah State Board of Education unanimously voted to support it, said Winder.
But it would still be a big lift for any legislator to start such a new program – especially for a freshman.
