Teacher pay hikes more than they seem

When administrators and union leaders reached a deal on a teachers contract, the September announcement trumpeted across-the-board raises of 3.8 percent.

Elgin Area School District U-46 teachers promptly rejected the deal.

The 3.8 percent was not the chief problem -- class size, teacher evaluations and future pay raises together sunk the deal.

Still, the 3.8 percent raise was cited in most discussions about the proposal -- and it wasn't what it seemed.

Most teachers would have received more than 3.8 percent.

A first-year teacher who earned eight semester credit hours during the year would have ended up with a 14 percent pay raise -- more than three times the advertised rate.

This discrepancy between what was reported as the pay increase and what was actually in the deal is typical of most contract negotiations.

The recent haggling in the state's largest high school district is a case in point.

Teachers in Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 were on the verge of a strike until the school board agreed Thursday to tack an additional 0.3 percentage point onto their raises for next school year, the second year of a two-year contract.

The school board had offered a 2.5 percent increase, but teachers were holding out for a second-year raise tied to the rate of inflation, now 2.8 percent.

Though teachers were willing to walk the picket line over the difference between 2.5 and 2.8 percent, neither figure reflects the raises most teachers actually will receive.

The deal will afford nearly three-fourths of teachers raises from 6.2 percent to 8.5 percent this year and between 4.9 percent and 7.9 percent in the second year.

Three raises …

Teachers typically can receive three types of raises -- and some receive all three in a single year.

Still, teachers -- and union officials -- usually only mention one of the three when talking about pay increases.

The type of raise most commonly reported during negotiations is the across-the-board base pay increase.

In U-46, the base pay raise was set at 3.8 percent in the first year of the tentative deal. In the second and third years, raises would be equal to the Consumer Price Index plus one percentage point.

In District 211, the raises will be 3.25 percent in the first year and equal to the Consumer Price Index in the second.

The second type of raise is called a step increase.

Most teachers also receive this raise, which is figured on top of the base raise.

Step increases are for experience, and teachers typically receive them every year for the first 20- or 30-odd years of their careers, depending on the district.

In some districts, though, teachers who don't go beyond a bachelor's degree will stop earning step increases after less than 10 years.

On the other hand, some districts will provide additional "longevity" raises, on top of the base pay raises, for teachers who no longer receive step increases.

A District 211 teacher just starting out will get the 3.25 percent base pay raise -- and a step raise of 5.2 percent -- for a total raise of 8.5 percent.

A teacher nearing the end of her career will get the 3.25 percent base pay bump and a step increase of 2.9 percent, for a total raise of 6.2 percent.

The third type of raise is the pay bump most districts give for taking advanced coursework. These "lane" raises can be worth thousands of dollars, but often are discounted by teachers, in part because teachers don't earn them every year.

In District 211, a first-year teacher who earns a master's degree would receive a pay bump of about 10 percent for graduating to a new lane.

District 211 officials have not released estimates of how much the average teacher would receive when you factor in base, step and lane increases under the new pact.

So the actual teacher raises in District 211 exceed even the district's ranges of 6.2 percent to 8.5 percent this year and 4.9 percent to 7.9 percent next year -- because the lane increases are not accounted for. The only teachers actually limited to just the publicized 3.25 percent raise are those who have exhausted all step and lane opportunities and make more than $100,000.

U-46 officials combined the cost of step and lane increases, projecting the two raises would cost the district an additional 1.9 percent. With base, step and lane increases, then, the typical U-46 teacher would have received a 5.7 percent pay raise in the first year of the tentative deal the union rejected. Published figures of 6.1 percent include increases in retirement payments.

… & they all count

Districts must take all three raises into account when calculating the true cost of a contract, Fox Lake Elementary District 114 Superintendent John Donavan said.

Otherwise, he said, "you have a real hard time (balancing) your budget and a real hard time conveying to the public what that is going to cost you."

The challenge, Donavan said, is persuading teachers unions to account for all three raises when reporting salary increases.

"Some teachers associations don't like to view step increases as part of the annual salary increase. They just like to look at that as money they are due no matter what," said Donavan, stressing that's not the case with his district's union.

When negotiating a contract, most districts do account for the costs of base, step and lane raises, U-46 Chief Financial Officer John Prince said.

"But the question is, do they reflect those in the stated raises?" Prince said.

Prince projects the cost of step, lane and base-pay increases, using data from previous years to determine which teachers are likely to earn more credit hours.

Other districts in the midst of contract negotiations forecast the cost of step and base increases, but not lane changes, since those are more difficult to predict.

The most recent contract for West Aurora Unit District 129, for example, affords base raises of 2 percent and average step raises of 2.2 percent. The district did not calculate how much lane raises were worth, spokesman Mike Chapin said.

Other districts simply count the overall cost of the contract to the district.

When McHenry Elementary District 15 negotiated its new teacher contract, the main issue on the table was how much "new money" the district would provide to teachers, Chief Financial Officer Allan Smigiel said.

But the cost to a district is not commensurate with what the average teacher receives. If a district has a number of teachers retiring who have reached the top of the pay scale, overall salary increases could appear deceptively modest.

In District 214, for example, a new contract called for base salary raises of 4.25 percent for all teachers. But with 80 teachers retiring, the overall cost of the new contract was only 2.5 percent.

The district couldn't immediately estimate the value of average step and lane increases.

"Our matrix is so large and teachers are moving not only across but up," District 214 spokeswoman Venetian Miles said. "It's really difficult to calculate what average raises would be."

Community Unit District 300 Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Crates said there's no one right way to report teacher raises.

Still, she said, her district chose to calculate the cost of lane, step and base pay raises together.

"We included it all, for transparency," Crates said. "It all depends on the culture of negotiations … and on what group you're talking to."