Mauston School Board Discusses Teacher Compensation
During a workshop last Wednesday, the Mauston School Board reviewed and discussed the School District of Mauston Teacher Compensation Model, and issues related to teacher compensation. Superintendent Christine Weymouth said they recognize and clearly know that Mauston’s teachers don’t make enough.
Four teachers addressed the board, Mandy Brice, Randy Gyllin, Mallory Campbell, and Alexandria Azarian. Brice said they feel like they are treading water because as they are constantly retraining new teachers; they are not getting to hit the goals and visions Mauston has. The group believe the teacher salaries with very little room for growth could be a reason why they are losing teachers. There was also the discussion about an equity issue within the pay schedule, where one teacher who has more experience in the teaching field could be potentially be paid the same as a teacher who has less years of experience. Some solutions that were brought up to help with the salary scale or compensation was maybe rethink the retirement benefits or maybe form something a model that teachers are held accountable based on what they do, not per say test scores, but other ways of performance.
After receiving some feedback from the teachers, Business Manager Julie Lankey-Smallwood gave the board some suggestions on how to get more cash into the salary schedule. Currently, the district offers post retirement health insurance benefits, which causes an unfunded liability. Lankey-Smallwood stated that currently a popular option in school districts is to pay for retirement health benefits up front, meaning giving teachers some money for retirement while they are working. After a vesting period determined by the Board, the money goes into a 403(b) and so the money grows as the teacher works. That would have the money in the budget and there would be no hanging liability. Lankey-Smallwood said in some cases, there are some teachers who don’t want to give up those post-retirement benefits when they are close to retiring. She stated they would like some notice if the district were to restructure, they would have the opportunity to retire under the present post retirement health insurance benefits. It would be a long term solution because in 2026-2027 that is when the unfunded liability would go away. There isn’t a lot savings until 2021 because the district would still be paying for those who retired with those benefits. This solution however doesn’t fix the base salary, but Lankey-Smallwood said people don’t realize that they need to save for retirement. Lankey-Smallwood said there is not a “fix” to quickly fix the salary schedule because there is no extra money.
Superintendent Christine Weymouth said that they need to be able to afford to boost the salary base. Board member Pam Holmes said they need to find extra money and though it was an unpopular topic, asked about the option of absorbing a school. Lankey-Smallwood said that the savings weren’t as significant as one would think to do that. The topic of referendum came up to help balance out the salary schedule. Lankey-Smallwood said in 2021, the district will be out of debt, and now is the time to start planning a referendum if that is where the board wanted to go. The district could go to referendum before 2021 because they could restructure the debt payments even after 2021.
After discussing the different options, the board directed Weymouth to create a survey to send out to the staff to gather data on what they would like to see.
Source: WRJC.com
News At Other State Sites:
[wp-rss-aggregator source=”87908,87904,713,696,676″]
WISCONSINREPORT.COM (WiscReport.com) is not affiliated with Wisconsin Government or any state agency, department, entity, or other website or printed publication with Wisconsin in it’s name. Established in 2002, we operate completely independent from political parties and other forms of outside influence. Our Mission is to report the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We are WiscReport on Twitter and Facebook. A Morbizco Internet Media online publication. – WisconsinReport.com.
Learn More about WisconsinReport.com.
