How Can Marion County COMPLY WITH THE PERFORMANCE PAY MANDATE ?

How Can Marion County COMPLY WITH THE PERFORMANCE PAY MANDATE ? Understanding why the journey, in this case, is not more enjoyable than reaching the destination!

SB 736 Terminology • “Grandfathered salary schedule” – The salary schedule for employees “grandfathered in” to either Professional Service Contracts (PSC) or Continuing Contracts (CC) before July 1, 2014. • “Performance salary schedule” – The Salary schedule for employees on Annual Contracts (AC) as of July 1, 2014. • Note: Instructional personnel may switch once from the Grandfathered schedule to the Performance schedule if they surrender their PSC/CC. They may not switch back, ever.

What SB 736 Requires • A “Highly Effective” teacher on Performance Pay must get a bigger raise than any other teacher. • An “Effective” teacher on Performance Pay must get a raise that is 50-75% of that of a “Highly Effective” teacher. • “Raises” are changes to their salary and are permanent – there is no provision for moving back on the salary schedule. • Sounds easy, right?

Here’s the problem… • Marion County’s salary schedule has a big step of $2960! • SB 736 therefore would require that each “Highly Effective” teacher on the performance pay schedule, regardless of years of experience, receive a raise of more than $2960 every single year! • Obviously not affordable over the long run, so what do we do?

SB 736 tells districts what to do: • Just give smaller raises! • That means change the schedule to reduce the “Big Step” • The law also says that if the district has less than the money it needs to give raises, everyone gets a proportionally smaller raise. • Regardless, if every Highly Effective teacher gets that huge raise under the current schedule, the budget will break every year. • Either we fix the salary schedule by minimizing the “big step”, or teacher salaries for most teachers will lag far behind in the long run!

Here’s how bad it can get • In the “old days,” step raise for all teachers is simply $187,000. • Theoretically, this is a predictable expense… • …but what happens with the new Performance Pay requirements of SB 736? • Example - consider a district which employs 200 teachers as distributed below:

Here’s how bad it can get • Suppose that 100 of the teachers from before are on Performance Pay, and the rest are on the Grandfathered salary schedule, distributed as below: • Of the Performance Pay teachers, suppose 50 get “Highly Effective,” and 50 get “Effective.” • Then 50 teachers have to get at least $5101, and 50 have to get at least $2551. • The cost of these raises, plus step for the other 100 teachers, is $525,100 !!! • Since 187000/525100 = .356, maintaining the prior year’s budget for raises means each teacher will only get 35.6% of what they thought they would get!

Here’s how bad it can get • Teachers expecting $200 only get $70.22. • Teachers expecting $5100 only get $1816.23. • Even Performance Pay teachers lose: the “Highly Effective” teachers expecting $5101 get $1816.58, and the “Effective” teachers expecting $2551 get $908.47. • Unless the Florida Legislature decides to triple education funding, this will happen year after year after year! And if our teachers become more effective, the problem grows in magnitude. • Neither teachers nor districts will know what their raises are for each new school year until the entire district gets evaluations for all of its teachers from the previous school year – not likely before October. • Conclusion…

…We must smooth out the salary schedule! • Instead of this… • …we need this!

But it’s not as easy as it sounds… • If we just move people up to the straight-line schedule, some teachers would get unrealistically large or small raises.

But it’s not as easy as it sounds… • Or, we could put people on the same step … but it doesn’t seem fair to have several year groups making the same amount.

The Solution? “Fractional Steps”! • Divide steps into halves or 3rds, 4ths, etc. • Teachers still move one full step at a time, but can be placed “in between” steps. • This avoids both problems noted above. • It does take money to make these schedule adjustments – fortunately the Governor has provided that. • It also makes implementing the Performance Pay next year easier, as we’ll see…

The Solution? “Fractional Steps”! Instead of this: We would have this:

The Solution? “Fractional Steps”! • Now, employees can be placed to receive realistic raises, but are not collapsed together in an unfair way!

What about Performance Pay? • Remember: “Highly Effective” teachers get the biggest raise, “Effective” teachers get 50-75% of what “Highly Effective” teachers get. • With fractional steps, we can just move Highly Effective teachers up the schedule a bit faster. • For instance, we can move PSC/CC teachers 3 fractional steps, “Effective” teachers 3 fractional steps, and “Highly Effective” teachers 4 fractional steps. • This is what we are considering for Marion County!

What about Performance Pay? • Ex: Three teachers: Bill, Marie, and Janet. • Bill has a PSC and chooses to remain on the Grandfathered Schedule, Marie has PSC but opts to “roll the dice” and move to the Performance Pay Schedule, and Janet is AC and must compete for Performance Pay. • Assume they all start at the beginning step. • We will track their movement on the salary schedule over three years.

What about Performance Pay? • Day 1, Year 1 • All three start at 0A • Bill knows he will get a step each year • Janet and Marie know that their raise depends on their evaluation

What about Performance Pay? • After Year 1 • Bill gets 3/3 step • Janet receives an “Effective” rating on her evaluation and gets 3/3 step • Marie receives a “Highly Effective” rating on her evaluation and gets 4/3 step • This is the result:

What about Performance Pay? • After Year 2 • Bill gets 3/3 step • Janet receives an “Effective” rating on her evaluation again and gets 3/3 step • Marie receives a “Highly Effective” rating on her evaluation and gets 4/3 step • Here’s what happens:

What about Performance Pay? • After Year 3 • Bill gets 3/3 step • Janet receives a “Highly Effective” rating on her evaluation and gets 4/3 step • Marie receives a “Needs Improvement” rating on her evaluation and receives no increase • Here’s the result:

Conclusion We can smooth out the salary schedule with fractional steps such that it: • Can be implemented now and meets the requirements of SB 736 for 2014-15 • Can be funded with help from the Governor’s special allocation of recurring revenues • Is fair to all teachers regardless of contract status • Does not unnecessarily entice PSC/CC teachers to give up their right to “due process” • Makes sense in showing career earnings potential for prospective hires over the long haul • Is scalable to accommodate changes in revenue By labeling the fractional (1/3) steps, we maintain a salary schedule that makes it easy for payroll to track where people are. We retain the original placement plan to guide the assimilation of new hires who bring experience.

The Bottom Line: • The Marion County Public Schools administration chooses to spend the extra salary money on other parts of the budget. • They argue that other parts of the budget, including contracted services, are up. • The last time we looked, the salaries of teachers in Marion County were “contracted services” with a published salary schedule in the contract – one that has been ignored for four of the last six years. • We have presented an affordable salary request that should be approved immediately! • If they have to move money around in the budget – so be it! The School Board approves budget amendments at virtually every meeting!

How Can Marion County COMPLY WITH THE PERFORMANCE PAY MANDATE ?