Teacher pay still a test for Hoosier lawmakers
Navigating students, stress, meager paychecks
Despite economic and political head winds that might have sent their careers elsewhere, firstyear teachers Maegan Funk and Justin Fidnarik felt the calling to enter the profession.
“I struggled in elementary. I always wanted to be the one to help struggling students,” said Funk, 30, who grew up in Griffith.
Fidnarik credited the impact a coach and teacher had on his direction.
“I want to be that teacher that students can go to achieve their full potential,” he said.
In Indiana, being a teacher means dealing with uncertainty on many levels from struggling, unruly students to meager paychecks that sometimes require a second job.
Both Funk and Fidnarik, 23, of Hobart, didn’t land teaching jobs at Lake Station Edison JuniorSenior High School until two weeks before school began last fall. In early August, they were resigned to another year of work-
ing other jobs.
Funk worked in the office at a local car dealership and Fidnarik worked at a jewelry store.
Both say they’re too tired by the time they get home from school to worry much about politics floating around the Statehouse in Indianapolis that could impact them.
Boosting teacher pay for rookie teachers like Funk and Fidarnik is one of the issues facing lawmakers as they try to stem the state’s poor retention rate and bring salaries in line with neighboring states.
Historically, Lake Station teachers’ pay ranks among the lowest in Northwest Indiana. Last year, a firstyear teacher earned $36,500.
That pay was boosted to $39,500 this school year.
The school board and administration wanted to spend money on newer teachers, said Eric Kurtz, Lake Station’s chief financial officer.
“Our turnover has typically been in teachers making under $45,000,” Kurtz said. “We’ve had a hard time over the years keeping them. This year, all our teachers got a minimum of $2,000 but teachers at beginning range got $3,000.”
Fidnarik said he will work for the Hobart Parks Department this summer and continue at the jewelry store. Funk said she’ll probably spend her summer back at the car dealership.
With their teaching jobs came a complement full of accountability rules, teaching standards and persistent student testing that determines their raises and status.
“My students are tested in science in April or May so I always am kind of thinking of that in the back of my head but I don’t let it overpower me and faze how I teach,” said Funk, a Purdue Northwest graduate. “One test won’t show how I am in the classroom all year.”
The evaluations don’t bother Fidnarik.
“I feel the challenge of accountability. I let it push me to be accountable for myself and to track my own data,” said Fidnarik, a Manchester College graduate.
Former state Sen. Earline Rogers, a retired Gary teacher, said the legislature probably should have acted on teacher salaries and retention long ago.
“We should have done some things earlier ... to make sure salaries were competitive,” she said.
Rogers said teacher unions often face push back from Republicans because their ideologies don’t often line up with union goals. “It’s not part of the Republican ilk,” Rogers said.
Lawmakers respond
Many of the proposals on teacher pay so far involve encouraging schools to shift around money in their own budgets, rather than adding significant state money.
House Republicans have introduced their budget proposal, which had a roughly 3 percent increase for schools.
It includes several smaller proposal son teacher pay.
They have advanced Gov. Eric Holcomb’s proposal in their budget to use $150 million from the $1.8 billion state surplus to help schools pay down pension debt. Schools would be encouraged to use money saved for raises, Holcomb said previously.
Republicans also kept $30 million per year for teacher bonuses.
Advocacy groups are supporting other Republican-sponsored proposals, such as one creating a “career ladder” program in which teachers could receive extra pay for leading teams of teachers. Supporters say that will help keep experienced teachers in the classroom rather than having to leave for administrative positions to improve their salaries.
A Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis study released last year found that Indiana’s average teacher salary of $50,881 ranked 31st among the states when adjusted for cost of living differences — behind Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.
The Republican governor and GOP legislative leaders have touted the importance of finding ways to address Indiana’s lagging teacher salaries, but Democrats have argued their proposals are “recession-type numbers” not even surpassing inflation.
Education advocacy groups estimate a 9 percent funding increase would be needed to boost average teacher pay to the midpoint of Indiana’s neighboring states.
A significant chunk of the budget is expected to be used for the Department of Child Services and Medicaid. The House and Senate have until late April to approve a state spending plan.
Teacher rally planned in Indianapolis
The Indiana State Teachers Association is recruiting teachers for a “Red for Ed Rally” on Saturday, March 9, in Indianapolis.
It could be a thermometer for the likelihood of further protests, said Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, a labor law expert at Indiana University Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law.
“I think that’s a smart move on the part of the union,” he said. “They get to (gauge) how excited their membership is.”
If there’s a big turnout, “that sends a message to the legislature that you should try,” he said. A low turnout would be a signal to lawmakers that there would be less pressure to act.
“I guess it’s a gamble,” he said.
Indiana continues to struggle with recruiting and keeping teachers on the job, according to federal education data from 2016 to 2017 collected by the Californiabased Learning Policy Institute.
Starting pay, classroom sizes and a perceived shrinking sense of autonomy were top factors that led educators to give poor marks for its attractiveness for teachers.
Indiana received a 1.9 out of 5 score, according to the organization, based on data including those factors.
About 20 percent of teachers also expressed fear that standardized tests could impact their job security. About 10 percent said they had plans to leave, up from nearly 8 percent a few years earlier.
Nationally, the number of college students enrolled in education plunged by 35 percent between 2009 and 2014, the most recently available data.
Average teacher pay in Indiana dropped by 15 percent between 2000 and 2017 — to $50,554 in 2016-17 from $59,986 in 1999-2000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
That is a problem when teachers leave education entirely for higher paying jobs, Dau-Schmidt said.
“It gets harder to get talented kids to go into education,” he said. “It’s really only the dedicated ones and they are looking around saying, ‘Geez, I want to be able to afford a house.’”