Promises, Promises on Teacher Pay Raises

Once again, during the budget process in state legislatures, states are again promising to spend more on teacher salaries, with the intent of trying to bring them up to where they should be.

However, as this article points out about Virginia teacher salaries, given teachers a raise is much easier said than done, so why bother. Of course, it is politically popular to promise such raises, but no particularly realistic.

The funny thing is that the article talks about Fairfax county, the 12th largest school district in the United States. This is a county whose school budget this year is about $1.8 billion, which includes a roughly 9% increase over last year's budget. The superintindent has said he will ask for another 9% increase next year, bringing the total budget for the school system only to almost $2 billion. A big increase to be sure, but why. Are there more students expected, sure, about 200. With a 9% increase next year in funding, the school system is asking for about $700,000 more per new student. Lets see, the average salary for a Fairfax county teacher is about $40,000, at that rate, a 3% pay raise equates to $1200. For an addtionally $700,000, you could give 583 teachers a 3% pay raise.

The Washington Post estimates that to give all the teachers in Fairfax county at 3% raise would cost $28.5 million, or a measly 1.5% of the budget of $1.9 billion. By the way, a 9% increase of a $1.8 billion budget comes to $162 million, so the pay raise would take just 17.6% of the budget increase. A 9% raise for the average teacher would be $3600 per year. Such a payraise would cast the county some $85 million or about 52% of the funding increase for next year.

It seems to me that Fairfax county, one of the richest counties in the country needs to figure out how to pay its teachers more, or soon none of hte teachers will be able to live in the county. It doesn't make sense to have such a massive budget increase and not have a similary massive pay raise.

Teacher Raises Dwindle in State Formula (washingtonpost.com)