In January, Stafford County Public Schools officials will push for a $25 million plan to give every teacher a raise.
The school division aims to completely overhaul its pay scale for teachers to become more competitive with jurisdictions like neighboring Prince William County, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties.
All of those jurisdictions pay their educators more and regularly pluck teachers from Stafford County Public Schools. A total of 60% of the teachers who leave Stafford schools choose to go north to Prince William County, two and a half times the number of teachers that go to neighboring Spotsylvania to the south.
Under the newly proposed scale, teachers’ starting salary would be increased to $50,000, up from about $45,800. It’s about $1,800 and $2,500 less than the starting teacher salary in Prince William and Fairfax counties, respectively.
Teachers with 15 years of experience would make $64,000 a year, about $10,000 less than Prince William County. The raises, called step increases, would be phased in over three years.
“We’re not trying to become Prince William overnight, or in 10 years, but we are trying to stay competitive,” said Patrick Byrnett, the school division’s director of human resources.
Public safety pay raises set a precedent
Before it does anything, the school division must find the money to fund the salary increases, and its pinned its hopes on a funding increase from Gov. Ralph Northam’s upcoming state budget to be presented in mid-December and asking the Stafford County Board of Supervisors for a larger slice of the county budget.
“The number one goal is to attract and retain teachers,” said Stafford schools superintendent Dr. Scott Kizner. “I say we make a major commitment to do it.”
Kizner is bullish on securing pay raises for his teachers after the Board of Supervisors earlier this year voted to hike the county budget $4 million to provide pay raises for all public safety employees — sheriff’s deputies and fire and rescue personnel — who, too, have left the county for job opportunities in counties to the north, and the Federal Government.
“The [Board of Supervisors] made that commitment in one year. We’re giving you three [years],” Kizner added.
Support staff excluded from raises
If the current proposal is approved, only faculty members will get raises, while other school employees, including support staff, would not. A school division spokeswoman told PLN on Wednesday, December 2, the day after this story first published, the school division has yet to present a pay raise plan for its support staff.
The school division’s request for additional funding to begin the phased-in pay raises could be in front of the Board of Supervisors by January.
Rock Hill District School Board member Patricia Healy urged Kizner to proceed slowly when committing to a multi-year plan to increase the school division’s budget. She said that doing so could give would-be teachers false hope for higher pay rates that may never materialize.
“The [School] Board can only commit to this for one year… the funding is not in our control,” said Healy. “I don’t want to have someone say ‘I’m going to work in Stafford because this is [going to be my rate of pay] in three years’… we have to be cautious before we start talking about any commitment.”
Fewer college students are signing up to be teachers. According to the most recent numbers from 2017, 31% fewer students enrolled in an educational prep course at a university in Virginia.
At the University of Mary Washington, 28% fewer students completed an educational prep program. Statewide in 2017, 18% of students failed to complete a prep program.
College students are choosing other, higher-paying professions, said Byrnett.
Tenured teachers with between five and 15 years of experience are also leaving the profession, citing personal reasons. “Many of them are saying “I have two kids now, so it doesn’t make sense for us to have two kids in daycare, so I’m just going to stay home,'” Byrnett added.
This story has been corrected.
