The new new contract | An innovative plan for Portland's teachers recasts the formula for salaries and raises
What's not known is how much the new system will cost, or what effect Gov. John Baldacci's recent school consolidation proposal will have, and those unknowns are raising concerns among teachers.
Even so, the new contract, which the Portland Education Association voted 476 to 65 to accept on Nov. 28, is being described by district and union officials as "innovative" and "an impetus in the evolution of salary scales."
For almost 40 years, ever since teachers in Maine received the right to collective bargaining in 1969, teacher contracts in the state, including how salary increases are determined, have remained mostly unchanged. Portland's previous contracts, as well as most teacher contracts nationwide, have directly tied salary increases for teachers to length of employment and attainment of advanced degrees. By contrast, the new contract ties increases in salary to the pursuit of professional development, classroom innovation and contributions to the wider school community.
"[The contract] allows teachers individual leeway to craft professional development experiences that are really going to help their teaching," says Gary Vines, a guidance counselor at Deering High School in Portland and chief contract negotiator for the local teacher's union. "It will help them be more effective with individual students and allow them to make contributions to the school community."
While legislation like the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which holds schools accountable for the education of students by monitoring standards-based test scores, and Maine Learning Results, which carries a similar objective, take a big picture approach to educational reform, the new contract in Portland addresses the issue from the microcosm of the individual classroom. "I think the idea [behind the new contract] is to listen to your teachers," says Kathleen Casasa, president of the Portland Education Association. "We really do understand and know what needs to happen in education in order to meet the needs of all of our students."
Reaping rewards
Portland teachers received a three-percent increase on their base salaries this school year, and the new 10-step salary structure will go into effect for the 2007-08 school year. The budget for teachers' salaries will increase from $34 million last school year to $38.4 million in the 2008-09 school year, and spending on teacher salaries will increase by 12.8% over the three-year life of the contract. Under the new contract, the highest possible salary is $79,203, compared to the previous high of $62,553 last year.
The previous Portland contract had four "pay lanes": one for teachers with a bachelor's degree, one for teachers with a master's, another for those with a second master's degree, and one reserved for those with a doctorate (which comprised only 2% of teachers during the 2004-05 school year, according to the state Department of Education). Each pay lane had 31 salary steps. A new teacher with a bachelor's degree would start on the first step of the first pay lane. (The starting salary in Portland for a teacher with a bachelor's degree in 2005-06 was $31,730, according to the PEA). The teacher would ascend one salary step for each year of service, which often came with a raise — though sometimes it didn't says Vines. To reach the first pay lane's maximum salary of $55,716, the teacher would have worked in the district for 31 years. The only way to move to the next pay lane would be to receive a master's degree.
The new contract, retroactive to September 2006, removes that emphasis on length of employment by decreasing the number of salary steps within the pay lanes from 31 to 10. It also increases the number of lanes from four to five and removes the lanes' association with advanced degrees, relying on a new unit of measure known as a "contact hour."
Under the new plan, a teacher must receive 225 contact hours to jump from one pay lane to the next, Vines says. Teachers will be able to receive contact hours a number of ways. Teachers are still encouraged to pursue advanced degrees and will receive credit for those, Vines says — one college credit will equal 15 contact hours — and teachers also will receive contact hours for continuing education classes they attend through colleges and universities.
But it's a new option that Vines describes as "perhaps the most unusual" that's generating the most buzz among the rank and file. Under the new plan, teachers can receive contact hours for activities that don't automatically carry college credit, but demonstrate professional development or contributions to the classroom or larger school community: attending workshops or seminars, creating innovative classroom projects or a new curriculum, participating in committee work, and so on.
This aspect of the new contract excites some teachers who look forward to receiving credit for the work they do in and out of the classroom. Cheryl Shuttleworth, a special-ed teacher at Portland's Nathan Clifford Elementary School, has a master's degree and is at the top of her current pay scale — and she has no intention of getting another advanced degree to jump to another pay scale. Under the new system, however, she can be rewarded for the recertification and teacher in-service workshops she already does. "This turns it up a notch," she says of the new plan. "It makes me very motivated to get 225 contact hours to get a lane change."
But with no strict definition of what activities earn contact hours, some teachers wonder if the way the hours are awarded may be too subjective. The school district's human resources department will field all proposals from teachers for contact hours, Vines says, and conflicts will go to a review panel that will issue a recommendation. If there is still debate, the case will go before what Vines calls the "living contract" committee, which will give a final thumbs up or thumbs down to the proposal. Gradually, supporters say, the activities that receive contact hours will be defined, and more activities will be added to the list. "As we get more, we'll start seeing some standardization," says Casasa, who adds that "we have a pretty good handle on things that will be granted contact hours."
Competitive edge
Alternative compensation isn't new — other systems have linked salary increases for teachers to student or school-wide test scores or evaluations. But Steven Kimball, who researches national teacher compensation issues at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin, says he hasn't heard of a contract quite like Portland's. And just because it's novel doesn't mean it will necessarily benefit students, Kimball cautions. "If [the district] watches what's approved [for contact hours] and tracks the effect it has in the classroom, that would be interesting to see the validity of it," he says. "It's not a given that the more experience you have the better your students will perform."
Casasa says the Portland union's involvement in national organizations like the National Education Association and the Teacher Union Reform Network, a union-led effort to improve the learning environment for students, meant it could talk to other educators around the country that have attempted alternative compensation plans. She says Portland took the best elements of each to create the new contract. Joe Stupak, director of collective bargaining and research at the Maine Education Association, says the "teacher-controlled activities" that will count for contact hours "may be more relevant to teachers' effectiveness than simply the attainment of an advanced degree."
How the contract works in practice remains to be seen, but for now Portland educators seem relieved to have the contract process behind them. Both the Portland teacher's union and the district administration have endorsed the contract. "I'm very pleased with how innovative I think [the contract] is," says Mary Jo O'Connor, Portland's superintendent of schools, "and I say that very unabashedly."
One reason O'Connor supports the new contract is that it makes the Portland district more competitive when attracting new teachers — an issue faced by schools across the country and one driven by the profession's comparatively low pay. In Maine, the average public school teacher's salary is $39,601, with starting salaries between $25,000 and $31,000 depending on the district, according to the Maine Education Association. (The average starting salary for a liberal arts graduate in 2006 was between $31,000 and $33,000, according to the Bethlehem, Penn.-based National Association of Colleges and Employers.) The National Education Association says 20% of new public school teachers in the country leave the profession by the end of the first year, and almost half leave within five years.
While the Portland School District doesn't have a retention problem, attracting quality teachers will become increasingly important in the next several years as close to a third of the teachers in the district approach retirement, Vines says. It's a national trend: The median age of teachers has increased from 33 in 1976 to the mid-40's today, which means fewer younger teachers are entering the profession, according to the Santa Monica, Calif.-based National Institute for Excellence in Teaching. "We're not only in competition with other school districts," Vines says of the staffing challenge, "we're also in conflict with other places people can go and market their skills."
The cost of innovation
Because the new contract gives teachers more opportunities to reach a higher pay scale, the system will cost more to implement than previous contracts. Some teachers worry that the system's costs will increase and put pressure on the district's budget, and that the plan will be eliminated when the contract is renegotiated in three years. "Many teachers think the plan sounds good," says one teacher, "but there is skepticism as to how long it will last."
Casasa understands the uncertainty in the ranks. "Change is hard," she says, especially when "you start to talk to people about changing the way they get paid." Union negotiators insist that the cost of the new contract is similar to what it could have been if the union had simply renegotiated its old contract, Casasa adds. She also points out that many of the teachers approaching retirement are near the top of their pay scales; when they retire, they'll be replaced by younger teachers with lower salaries, and that "turnaround savings" can be funneled back into the system.
Casasa says it's unclear how many teachers will take advantage of the new system to jump pay scales, and how quickly they'll do it. But she says it's the same guessing game with any contract, whether estimating how many teachers will go after a master's degree one year or how many will collect enough contact hours to qualify for a raise.
Hovering over everything is the governor's proposed plan to consolidate school districts, a move that would affect contracts and teacher pay statewide. "There are about 250 districts, so there's that many contracts" to acknowledge, Casasa says. "Somehow that will have to be figured out."
Casasa admits a few details of the contract may need to be changed as the plan is implemented, but she believes it will be the basic foundation on which contracts around the state will be built in years to come. "We think it will work," she says.
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