Peters contract negotiations need to get creative
It has been stated over and over that the average teacher salary in Peters Township is in excess of $70,000. This does not at all paint the picture of what salaries look like for teachers. Looking at the 2015/2016 salaries proposed by the district, almost two-thirds (62 percent) of the teachers will make $62,780 or less. While one-third (33 percent) of the teachers will make more than $100,000. There is actually no teacher that makes a salary in the $70,000s. This huge disparity in salaries is the result of the $40,000 salary bump that occurs after 17 years of service.
This salary bump has huge implications for the pension contributions (PSERS) for the district, which, with the recent change in legislation transferring most the contribution costs to the local school districts, will cripple the education budget in the future years. To address this, our school district needs to get creative.
My suggestion is to come up with a solution to phasing out the final step increase (grandfathering current employees to some extent), while raising the salary increases in the earlier years of service – certainly above the insulting $500 increase proposed by the district. The final salary step increase of approximately $40,000 no longer makes sense (if it ever did) in today’s economy.
This solution would have many benefits:
• It would free up funds to have higher salary increases for the teachers with less years of service, which would enable the district to continue to attract high-quality teachers.
• It would remove (or reduce) the proverbial carrot dangled in front of the teachers that creates an incentive for teachers to stay past their desire to teach and their effectiveness as teachers.
• It would ultimately greatly reduce the cost of the PSERS contributions, since the retirement salaries would be lower.
I understand that this has huge ramifications with the teachers union. But I would imagine that the younger teachers or teachers with less years of service would be attracted to having more money on hand earlier in their career.
Nipping at the salary increases will not address the much larger impact the PSERS costs will have in the future, and it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. We cannot count on legislation to change again and address the huge budget impacts.
Katherine Reitz
Venetia