Have Teachers Salaries Increased or Decreased?

I came across an interesting article the other day discussing the broad idea of teacher's salaries. The title read Miami Dade Teacher Salaries Then and Now.  Naturally, this piqued my interest. The article specifically discussed the teacher's salaries in light of inflation over the past 10 years. Anything that includes numbers and education is my kind of article! (haha) Seriously though, this is an important discussion that effects thousands of humans throughout not only Polk County but also the state of Florida. Who knows though, maybe the district(s) is(are) makin' it rain on the teachers!

Or....

Miami-Dade Teacher Salary

- For beginning teachers, the salary has increased. However, the starting salary isn't comparable to other similar size cities. Even in cities that have a lower cost of living, teachers make more money. The current salary for a beginning teacher is $40,600.

- The author argues that a 22-year veteran teacher is losing roughly $5,000 due to inflation.

- The picture is even worse for a 15-year veteran teacher. Those teachers are losing an astronomical $11,000.



Polk School District Teacher Salary

So, how does Polk School District compare to the Miami Dade School District? Allow me to place a disclaimer on this conversation. The salaries between the two school districts will be different. This is mainly attributed to the cost of living differences between the two school districts. You can look at the table below for a summary of the salary changes. I will also attempt to explain the table. The first column shows the pay for beginning, 15-year veteran and 22-year veteran teachers. The second column shows the 2006-2007 salary in 2017 dollars. (The inflation calculations have been performed using the US inflation calculator.)

Beginning Year Teacher
A beginning teacher making $33,283 in 2007 should be making $39,251 if proper inflation was accounted for. This is roughly a $6k increase. When the inflation dollars are compared to the actual 2017 salary for a beginning teacher, the beginning teacher is making more! They make $1,421 more dollars. This is awesome for the beginning teacher. Huge thanks to the union, PEA, that has made this financial gain for beginning teachers. 

Veteran Teacher(s)
I can't paint a similar picture for our 15-year and 22-year veteran teachers. In 2017 dollars, the 15-year veteran teacher should be making $49,834 and the 22-year veteran teacher should be making $60,359. As you can read from the table, the 2016-2017 salary does not keep up with inflation (The parenthesis means that there is a decrease). The longer a teacher works at educating our children, the worse the salary. Our 15-year veteran teacher is losing out on $1,662. The 22-year veteran teacher loses even more, $7,987.

	2006-2007	Adjusted for inflation	2016-2017	Difference
Beginning Teacher	$33,283	$39,251	$40,672	$1,421
15-year Teacher	$42,256	$49,834	$48,172	$(1,662)
22-year Teacher	$51,181	$60,359	$52,372	$(7,987)

Huh?
There is an alternate way of thinking about the connection between inflation and salary. The teacher salary is not keeping up with their expenses. One part of inflation is the cost of goods, i.e. groceries, gas, and electricity. While the cost of these goods is increasing, teachers are not able to afford as much as they could 10 years ago.

There appears to be a tipping point for the salary of Polk School District teachers. At some point between year 0 and year 15, the pay scale does not grow like inflation grows. This is a cause of concern for me. It further shows how our veteran teachers are valued. (Or in this case, not valued) A teacher with 15 years has a wealth of experiences to provide to our students. Many educational experts would argue that they are significantly more valuable than beginning teachers.

Take Away

No one wants their salary decreased. Everyone can agree that it can be very demoralizing. There are several people that are involved with making decisions about salaries.

1. The Florida Congress. They are the ones who create the overall budget for all school districts throughout the state
2. The Polk County School Board. They create the pay scale for all employees within the district.
3. PEA (Union). They fight for teachers salary.
4. Teachers. We must stand up for appropriate pay for employees in our school district.

There isn't one person or group to blame here. It will take all parties working together. We can't have one person continuing to decrease school funding.

But, I should note that the teachers of the Polk School District are in a better position than their Miami-Dade counterparts. For that, I am very thankful.

(Once again, thanks to Kafkateach.)