D51 board approves pay raise, salary structure shift for teachers

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel | May 25, 2023| NATHAN DEAL

A pay raise is coming for Mesa County Valley School District 51 teachers.

The teacher pay increase will start next semester thanks to a return to the “steps and lane” structure of payment that rewards educators for continuing their own education and for building experience.

The District 51 Board of Education unanimously voted to ratify the new contract at its meeting Tuesday evening at R-5 High School. The contract was the result of this year’s negotiations between district administration and the Mesa Valley Education Association (MVEA).

The starting base teacher salary will be around $47,000 — a nearly $10,000 increase from just a few years ago. Teachers with a master’s degree will earn close to $51,000 to start their D51 tenures. Any teacher with a doctorate will receive a starting salary of just over $60,000.

“We’re also planning on moving back to a ‘steps and lanes’ structure that monetarily rewards our hard-working teachers and MVEA staff for continuing their education to be better equipped to teach our students, so that’s a good move we’ll be making, as well,” said D51 Superintendent Brian Hill. “Staff across our system will be eligible for a little over 7% of a cost-of-living adjustment plus an annual step increase if available. We’ll soon approve a budget that continues to prioritize fiscal responsibility while taking care of our hard-working staff.”

“I think what we’ve done really well this year is getting away from this system of pay that we’ve used in our district for the last eight years. The problem with the old system is it just didn’t incentive educators,” added MVEA President Tim Couch.

“We’re educators. We should value education. The old pay system did not value education. If you had a master’s or a PhD, it didn’t matter. Your pay was still low…. We’ve talked to members that have come to us and said, ‘Thank you. I was going to leave the school district. Going back to steps and lanes with my degree and everything I have, I’ll be able to stay because I’ll finally be making enough money.’”

The boost in teacher salaries is also the result of increased funding for schools statewide through the Public School Finance Act of 2023. District 51, like all other districts in Colorado, is set to receive a greater total of funding from that policy than in years past. The district is going to receive $203.4 million in those funds, a $14.8 million increase from last year, as well as $4.6 million in separate universal preschool funding.

Hill has made it clear in the past that increasing teachers’ pay would be the top priority for how to manage those monies.

“This will make us more competitive in recruiting and retaining teachers, especially since we know all other school districts in Colorado are going to receive additional funding like we did and they’re going to use that to raise their staff pay as well, so we have to continue to prioritize that with our dollars,” Hill said.

Couch said that, in future negotiations, beyond further pay raises for teachers in order to provide salaries more competitive with other school districts in the state, priorities will include better working conditions, better benefits and a structure that will allow teachers and the district to work together to solve some of the most pressing issues plaguing classrooms and hallways.

“We always have work to do, and it’s not just the district. Educators have work to do; we know that,” Couch said. “We have discipline issues. We need to be really focused on what discipline in our schools looks like and that it’s consistent across the district. We have a discipline matrix; we just need to get some teams together to work on that and make sure we’re consistent. Students do better when they have consistency, and that includes in discipline.”

This year’s negotiations included Couch and other MVEA leaders, Hill, the district’s leadership, and the district’s designated outside counsel, David Price. Board of Education members did not sit in on this year’s meetings, collectively citing their status as a decision-making body and not a negotiating one. Board President Andrea Haitz said the board actually got more clarity on the process by not sitting in on the meetings directly and receiving details from legal counsel and district leaders.

“It was beneficial from a board member’s standpoint,” Haitz said.

Couch disagreed with that assessment, but he also said the lack of the board’s presence wasn’t “debilitating” to negotiations and that the discussions ultimately arrived where they likely would have whether board members were there or not.

“I think the process worked for the way it was set up,” Couch said. “I don’t think it was the best process. I think getting away from having the board at the table is detrimental to the understanding of everybody and the ability to communicate and collaborate together. I think the system this year worked; I just don’t think it’s the best system and we should always try to have the most efficient, most effective system when we’re talking about large amounts of money and the way we run our schools. I think the school board should be involved in those discussions.”