A Nashville Teacher Speaks Out

MNPS teacher Amanda Kail last night delivered a speech to the School Board detailing the needs of teachers in terms of compensation and support.

Here’s the full text of her remarks:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board. My name is Amanda Kail, and I am an MNPS teacher.

I am here today as part of the #Red4Ed movement that began in West Virginia, and has since spread to Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, and now Nashville. In our city, teachers across the district have joined together by wearing red on Tuesdays. We are doing this for 2 reasons: First, to show that we are united in our desire to see our district fully-funded, and second, because we are no longer content to sit back and donate our own money and time to subsidize what state and local officials won’t fund. So we plan to be at BOE and Metro Council meetings on Tuesdays, keeping track of votes and demanding change.

We find our current situation intolerable. Our district is ranked 12th in the state for average wages, yet we have one of the highest costs of living in the state. It takes a teacher with a Masters Degree 11 years to earn $50,000. We have lost vital staffing positions like the psychologists and social workers that keep our students OUT of the school-to-prison pipeline. Our schools are enduring painful cuts to the very resources and programs that support our students social-emotional well-being the most: arts and music, after school programs, and field trips. Maplewood needs its auto shop reopened.

I would also like to say that teachers not only have been subsidizing the district by donating our labor at sub-standard wages, we have been subsidizing the needs of our students and families. Like many teachers, I have fed, clothed, taken to the hospital, paid prison fees, and paid for the funerals of my students.

We say this is intolerable, but we are not content just to complain. We are here to demand change. Because by joining #Red4Ed, we join teachers across the country in becoming warriors for the dignity of our profession, and for the needs of our students and their families.

To that end, we are asking you to do what you can within the powers of your office.

The compensation committee will meet tomorrow to begin the process of recommending raises for teachers. We ask you to join us by making the work of the compensation committee a priority, and immediately begin working with Metro Council for a short-term plan for the 2019-20 budget to include 5% raises for faculty and staff, along with step raises, and a long-term plan to increase wages by a minimum of 5% every year until MNPS ranks in the top 50% of The Council of the Great City Schools. We also demand a revision to the salary schedule that allows teachers to reach competitive salaries in a reasonable amount of time.

Second, BOE shift priorities from increased pay for outside vendors and top administrators to affording the men and women on the ground who are actually doing the work of educating our city’s children (because honestly, right now the city can’t afford us).

Do right by Nashville’s families. Start the process to fully fund #ItCitySchools NOW.

 

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Since You Asked

 

In a recent article outlining a list of priorities for the next Director of MNPS, Board Member Will Pinkston said:

We also need a top-to-bottom review of our teacher compensation system to understand how we stack up against competing and similarly situated U.S. school systems, such as Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Denver and Louisville.

Here is some information on how the MNPS pay scale compares to pay scales in the cities Pinkston mentions. I used the salary paid to a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and looked at starting salary, salary at year 10, salary at year 20, and the top salary paid on the current schedule.

Here’s what it looks like:

Start                    10                          20                      TOP

MNPS                     $42,082                $44,536                 $54,800              $55,757

Louisville              $41,756                $53,759                 $69,514                $70,636

Charlotte               $37,946               $46,008                $53,954                $58,525

Austin                     $46,401               $48,837                $55,477                 $70,751

Atlanta                   $44,312               $54,167                 $62,075                 $66,467

Denver                   $38,765              $47,136                 $53,838*

*Denver has a teacher compensation system known as ProComp and the highest step is 13. Teachers in Denver earn the base pay indicated plus are eligible for incentives and base pay increases based on professional development, advanced degrees, and measures of student outcomes.

Here are a few takeaways from the raw information:

1) Starting pay in MNPS is on par with the cities Pinkston identifies as similar to/competitive with Nashville.

2) Long-term pay increases in MNPS don’t keep pace with those in other, similar districts. Taking Denver as an example, a teacher who received NO ProComp incentives and maintained only a bachelor’s degree would make at Step 13 very close to what an MNPS teacher with similar education makes at Step 20. In all other cities examined, the top step is higher (from $3000 to $15,000) than it is in MNPS.

3) Just three hours north of Nashville in a city with similar demographics and cost of living, a teacher can earn significantly better pay over a career. While a teacher in Louisville starts out making slightly less than a new Nashville teacher, by year 10, the Louisville teacher makes $9,000 more than her Nashville counterpart and by year 20, that difference stretches to $15,000. The lifetime earnings of a teacher in Louisville significantly outpace those of a teacher in Nashville.

4) Nashville’s teacher pay is higher than most of the surrounding districts — making it a competitive choice for teachers seeking to teach in middle Tennessee. However, for Nashville to become a destination for teachers wanting to build a career (or continue one) in urban education, Nashville may need to do more to improve its overall compensation package.

5) This analysis is a starting point — it’s raw data from district websites about base compensation plans. It does not take into account relative cost of living (except as noted in the comparison with Louisville) and other factors that may make teaching in Nashville an attractive proposition.

 

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport