Bill To Raise Minimum Teacher Pay Has Hidden Complexities

 Supporters hope a bill in the state Senate will attract new educators to offset an ongoing shortage of qualified, certified teachers in West Virginia.

Senate Bill 516 would increase the state’s minimum salary for teachers with a bachelor’s degree or higher to $50,000, bringing West Virginia in line with neighboring states like Virginia and Ohio. That would mean new educators would immediately start earning in their first year at the same level as teachers with four years of experience.

Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, expressed concern that both new and veteran teachers receiving the new minimum pay would be locked into that amount for several years in the bill’s new pay scale.

“Depending on if someone has their bachelor’s, bachelor’s plus two, plus whatever it might be, all the way up to a Ph. D., we’re going to be treating all those teachers the same,” Garcia said.

He compared the new schedule to Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s proposed pay raise of $1,600 across the board for all educators.

“It looks like at the end of the day, if we use this schedule, then people that have been there for a long period of time would actually get less of a pay raise than that proposal itself,” Garcia said.

Concerns that more experienced teachers would balk at being paid the same as their entry level co-workers has been a repeated concern when raising starting teacher pay has been proposed in prior years.

Kristie Skidmore, president of the American Federation of Teachers – West Virginia, told lawmakers in the Senate Education Committee Thursday the state loses most teachers within the first five years of employment.

“It’s a tough job, and there needs to be some kind of incentive, first of all, to take the job, but also to stay in the field,” she said.

Increasing minimum pay and particularly for new teachers has been discussed for years in the state legislature, but an estimated fiscal note of $70 million gives many lawmakers pause.