See Where Teachers Got Pay Raises This Year
By Daarel Burnette II & Madeline Will
More than a year after teachers across the country began walking out of their classrooms en masse to demand higher salaries, at least 15 states have given their teachers a raise.
And lawmakers in several more states are putting the final touches on plans to raise teacher salaries, according to an 澳门跑狗论坛 analysis.
Earlier this year, 澳门跑狗论坛 counted 22 governors who proposed raising teacher pay in their State of the State addresses. The proposals ranged from Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey鈥檚 ambitious plan to give teachers a 20 percent raise by 2020 to Delaware Gov. John Carney鈥檚 proposal of a 2 percent raise. Other governors, such as in Idaho and Pennsylvania, have proposed increasing their state鈥檚 minimum pay for teachers.
Now that the legislative sessions are largely over, most governors have seen their plans fully or partially realized. But there have been some snafus: For instance, because of a computer glitch, Mississippi Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law a budget that didn鈥檛 include enough money for the $1,500 raises the state promised its teachers this fall.
And the new money approved by governors in many cases now is negotiable with local unions. Already, teachers in Fargo, N.D., and Brevard, Fla., are at an impasse with their administrators over who will get raises this year and how much those raises will be.
For their part, teachers have mostly welcomed the raises, but some have said the increases don鈥檛 go far enough, especially after what they see as years of legislative inaction.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a great start, but they鈥檙e going to have to continue to come up with more in the next several years,鈥 Lisa Ellis, a high school journalism teacher in Blythewood, S.C., and the founder of the grassroots teachers鈥 group, SCforED, said of the state鈥檚 plan to raise teacher pay. 鈥淭eachers are now awake and watching.鈥
Here鈥檚 what you need to know about each state鈥檚 plan (as of June 17) to raise teacher pay. (The average teacher salary for each state for the 2018-19 school year, which would not include these raises.)
Image Credit: Getty
A version of this article appeared in the June 19, 2019 edition of 澳门跑狗论坛 as Teachers鈥 Pay Raises Across the Country