Teachers in Brown County Schools will soon be receiving raises.

The school board unanimously approved the contract for 2019-2020 with the Brown County Educators Association at the Nov. 7 school board meeting.

The biggest raise a teacher will receive is $5,050, and the smallest raise equals $1,825 for teachers who hold bachelor’s degrees.

“It is pretty substantial,” Superintendent Laura Hammack said of the new contract.

During the last Indiana General Assembly, legislators voted to give districts the flexibility to fix the “teacher salary compression issue,” Hammack said.

“That is what happened when we went years and years when we were not able to make any adjustments to the salary schedule or teacher ladder,” she said.

“You could make different jumps for teachers depending on how you wanted to go about it. The law has been that every raise has to be the same for all. You could never really fix for those teachers that were stuck for so long because then they think, ‘Well, I’ve been working here for six years, but I’m still only at level two.’ It’s kind of like getting them to where they need to be.”

The contract approved in 2017 was the first time since 2011 that Brown County teachers were able to predictably move up in salary levels based on their effectiveness rating and years of experience.

Since a law was passed in 2011 that prevented teachers from moving up a salary schedule based solely on experience, Brown County teachers had been stuck on their current salary step. The district had given them stipends and then some base salary increases, but teachers were not moved to different levels of pay.

“Our goal this year was certainly that we couldn’t fix seven years of no raises on the base, but we worked at it,” Hammack said.

The district and educators’ association worked together to redefine the salary “ladder” for teachers who hold master’s degrees. It was reduced to 15 rows from 19. Teachers were then redistributed onto the new ladder, which ultimately resulted in some teachers receiving the $5,050 raise.

The salary ladder for teachers who have bachelor’s degrees kept the same number of rows. That ladder allows for teachers to earn up to an additional $875 a year when they move up a step.

Teachers above “level A” on the bachelor’s ladder were also given a “double step” increase, which equals $1,750, according to the tentative agreement Hammack presented to the board on Oct. 17.

“Folks would realize a raise when they were newly placed on a level and we changed the jump between levels for both master’s and bachelor’s,” Hammack said.

The differential between steps on the master’s ladder is now $1,750.

Under the 2019-2020 salary schedule, a teacher can earn as much as $66,500 a year. Teachers with bachelor’s degrees could earn as much as $48,500 a year.

Teachers who are now at the top of the master’s ladder will receive a $300 salary base increase and a $1,450 stipend.

“We’re seeing about on the master’s ladder a 5-percent average increase for the salary. Some people have a 9- or 10-percent increase, which is amazing to be talking about percentages like that. We have not been able to do that,” Hammack said.

“On the bachelor’s ladder we did a double jump, so teachers didn’t move just one step like you would normally do, but they moved two steps. Then we also increased what that differential would be up to $875.”

Both ladders also had their levels relabeled from numbers to letters.

“The ladder model is not based on years of experience anymore,” Hammack said. The bachelor’s ladder model is based on if a teacher is rated effective or highly effective in an evaluation. It’s the same for the master’s ladder, but those teachers would earn an additional $875 for having a content area master’s degree.

“The former systems were (based on years of experience), so when you looked at the numbers, it was very natural for teachers to think, ‘Well, I have nine years of experience, but I’m only at level four, so why am I not (moving up)?’” Hammack said.

To account for their raises, teachers will begin receiving retroactive pay to the beginning of the school year beginning with their Nov. 15 paycheck.

Other changes included the total sick leave bank being reduced to 300 days from 500, and the individual cap being reduced from 90 days to 60. Both were requests from the educators’ association, Hammack said.

“The teachers were really great to work with. They really identified the teacher (pay) compression issue as really one of their priorities, and I think the fact that we were able to really get that done was quite satisfying for them, and quite frankly, it was just so the right thing to do,” Hammack said.

Where is the money coming from?

Negotiations between the school board and the Brown County Educators Association began in September. At the Sept. 5 school board meeting, Hammack said the district would use $120,000 to pay for certified staff raises.

Last year, Gov. Eric Holcomb announced that the state would pick up 2 percent of the 7.5 percent that school districts had been paying into the teacher retirement fund, in hopes that that extra 2 percent would then go to certified staff raises, Hammack said.

For Brown County, that 2 percent equaled around $120,000.

The raises this year are also funded by the referendum. Voters approved adding 8 cents per $100 of assessed value to the property tax rate in May 2016. That lasts for seven years.

“It cannot be understated the fact that the community supported the teachers via the referendum. We would not be in the position to have any raises these last few years without that referendum,” Hammack said.

Cuts to the district’s budget since last school year also helped to fund teacher raises. Since last school year, the district cut a little over $1 million from its budget. Several staff members were not replaced when they decided to leave the district, including nine certified teachers, one assistant transportation director, two paraprofessionals and a maintenance department position.

In May, the school board also approved a contract with Compass Group USA Inc. to take over the food service department through its Chartwell division.

For the past few years, Brown County Schools’ food service department’s budget had been running $150,000 to $200,000 in the negative. Chartwell pledged to close the budget gap and have $25,000 in a reserve fund within the first year.

“Even though we’re down in students, that would typically be a situation where if a school district had not made the cuts they needed to make, they would not be in a position to be able to give a raise,” Hammack said.

“We did that work ahead of time and you’re in a position to be able to pay the folks what they need to be paid.”

At the Nov. 7 meeting, the school board also unanimously approved raises for non-certified staff and administrators.

Hourly employees received a 25-cent raise, except for bus drivers who received $1 raises. Non-certified employees and administrators received 3-percent raises.

“We always start with the teachers. When we had teachers coming in at about 5 percent, we knew that was going to be hard to deploy across the rest of the organization. Teachers were really the focus for this year and then we’ll look at non-cert for next year,” Hammack said.

“We want to definitely always make sure that we’re competitive with our neighbors.”

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On Wednesdays, Brown County teachers wear red.

The Brown County Educators’ Association organized “Red for Ed” action days every Wednesday to bring awareness to and rally support for public education.

Brown County High School’s Eagle Manufacturing made the “We support public education” shirts that teachers in all of the school buildings wear.

On Nov. 19, at least eight teachers from Brown County will go to the Indiana Statehouse to attend a union-organized Statehouse rally to lobby for more school funding and higher teacher pay, among other items.

The Red for Ed Action Day at the Statehouse has resulted in more than 35 of the state’s nearly 300 school districts cancelling classes because they wouldn’t be able to find enough substitute teachers to cover classrooms.

Brown County Schools Superintendent Laura Hammack said last week that the district and the educators’ association here came to an agreement to send one teacher per school building to the rally at the Statehouse. Those teachers will use a professional leave day to attend the rally; they are picked by the educators’ association, she said.

Any other teachers who wish to attend the rally are allowed to use a personal day to do so. As of last week, two teachers were choosing to use a personal day for that reason.

“We have all of those subs filled at this point. We are not in a position where we need to close school at this point,” she said.

“I’m monitoring it every day. I’m in the system just to make sure we don’t have a bunch of requests (for personal time).”

If the requests pick up, Hammack said that she and the principals would sub in classrooms that day. If the district is not able to cover all of the subbing positions, then schools will be closed and students would then make the day up like a snow day. An eLearning day could not be used since teachers would be at the Statehouse that day and unable to assist students with their eLearning assignments, Hammack said.

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