Sounds as though our teachers are near the median income for our area. I’m sure that in other parts of the state the median income is less. That might be another factor to consider in making comparisons, since the cost of living in an area will probably track median income to some extent.

Let me put out some data, just so we are not left citing a two-year-old AA News article (which, by the way, got its national data from NEA research documents):

Ann Arbor average teacher salary, FY06-07: $66,624
(from MI Dept of Ed bulletin 1014) Please note that there was a buy-out of teachers near retirement at the end of that year.

Michigan average teacher salary FY06-07: $55,526 (MDE)
US average FY06-07: $50,758
Michigan ranked 10th in the US, and second in the Great Lakes after Illinois.

Michigan average teacher salary FY07-08: $56,096 (NEA estimate)
US average FY07-08: $52,308
Michigan ranked 11th in the US, again behind Illinois and with Ohio catching up.

Average change in public school teachers’ salaries in inflation-adjusted constant dollars, FY98-08:
Michigan: -11.1%
US: -0.6%
Michigan ranked 50th of 51 (including DC).

Michigan Dept. of Education data can be found here.

The NEA comparative data can be found here.

I guess the message here is teacher pay in Michigan is not as out of line with national averages as many people often think. Michigan teachers have also lost considerable ground in real pay over the last ten years. When we talk about asking teachers to make sacrifices now, we owe it to everyone to know what the real history has been.

Ms. Lesko – My point is that the main cost drivers for teacher pay are not raises and increases in benefits; they are the dramatically increasing cost of simply holding on to the same benefits. This is not a one year problem, but has been going on for years. To solve it only through cuts doesn’t mean a one-time cut. It means cuts year after year, with no end in sight. The 15 percent pay cut you propose, as drastic as that is, would only close the deficit for about two years. Then what?

We can continue to “solve” the problem by making continual cuts in programs and in staff compensation. But that is a never-ending downward spiral. Remember, the $14 million the AAPS has cut over the last three years was not a one-time cut to cover a one-time gap. It was regular cuts of $4 to $6 million **just to keep up**. If we were somehow able to push the cost of health care and retirement completely on district employees (which, legally, we cannot do), then we would simply be shifting the cuts. Teachers then would be seeing a higher and higher percentage of their stagnant salaries going to health insurance and retirement, lowering their pay well below inflation.

Is that a recipe for committed and caring employees who help shape the minds of our children five days a week?

[I should say here that a real solution to all this will require a change so that health costs are sustainable for the economy as a whole.]

You point out that “we have the money we have.” But where schools are concerned, I think the truth is “we have the money we decide to spend.” With Proposal A, we took the bait of lower property taxes, and hoped everything would somehow work out. I believe that this system is doing long-lasting damage to our schools, and I hope I can convince my fellow citizens to act before the cost of neglect becomes too great.

As Kris points out, “The average teachers’ salary in MI is $58,482 in 2007,” and in Ann Arbor the average is $71,000, or 17 percent higher than the already high state average. The simple truth is that, as a District, we have the money we have and our School Board members need to negotiate the next union contract keeping this simple fact in mind.

What if A2 lowered all teacher salaries by 10 percent in order to increase staffing levels, and reduce class sizes? What if we reduced all District employee salaries by 15 percent? Would every teacher, support staff member and administrator in the District run screaming to, say, another District? Which one? I think not, particularly if the goal were to increase teacher staffing and, ultimately, decrease class sizes. A 15 percent cut would result in $14 million dollars in savings.

What if one-third of the savings each year went toward hiring more teaching staff?

I suppose my point is that as a District we can’t continue to act as though there is an endless supply of state and local tax dollars to support an endless supply of raises, benefits and pensions for our teachers. If funding is down by 9 percent, than salaries, which make up 71 percent of the General Fund expenses, must be cut. Instead, we are cutting teachers, and increasing class sizes to continue to raise the already artificially inflated salaries of the teachers we already have.

Just for the record, while Skyline is certainly not Community, they are doing some very innovative stuff there – experimenting with how the school is organized, smaller “learning communities,” and so on. The teachers and staff there had to lobby the district and the AAEA to let them do this – and I welcome this kind of experimentation. As Pioneer and Huron get more elbow room, they plan to make some of these same changes in those schools as well.

While our student population might be dropping marginally, Pioneer was the largest high school in the state until Skyline opened. We may not have smaller classes after Skyline because new staff could not be added (a disappointment, and a result of the Proposal A funding system), but the overall crowding, and the resulting security and morale problems, will be eased. As I recall, Pioneer was operating at about double its design capacity.

Remember, even if we lose 200 students in a given year, we have 21 elementary schools, 5 plus middle schools and 3+2 high schools. Even if they were all elementary students, that would average just one student per school per grade level. Hardly enough to make closing buildings worthwhile, but it would still lose us on the order of $2 million.

I am very pleased that the district is experimenting with making the high school experience better, and I hope they have a chance to extend it to Pioneer and Huron soon. As a parent of kids who will be in HS in a few years, the old situation gave me great pause and the new efforts give me hope.

So Bob says we don’t need three high schools, but we already actually have almost a dozen. And each is unique and serves a certain population. I was never in favor of Skyline and voted against it. Why create another Pioneer/Huron clone when Community High has a waiting list (now about double the number of openings) and there are other alternatives desperately needed?

But I do think that one of our strengths in Ann Arbor is the alternatives that are offered. There SHOULD be at least a dozen choices in how to learn. I just wish they were all affordable, as many are not. Full disclosure – I am a frequent volunteer teacher at CHS (and alumni), and am a current part time faculty member at the Rudolf Steiner High School. I have strong biases on this subject I am happy to confess to.

I have a hard time believing there have been any true concessions with an average Ann Arbor teachers’ salary of $71,080 (in 2007, the highest in the area at that time), raises based of seniority (not merit), a nine month work year and a pension! (Almost NO ONE has pensions anymore) Please note as I stated before, reductions should be across the board not just by teachers and should be tiered to reflect a higher percentage cut for the folks that make more. And any numbers being discussed should be true cost numbers including ALL benefits (accrued and otherwise).

The average teachers’ salary in MI is $58,482 in 2007, the fourth highest in the USA!

Regarding the 8% health care increase vs. the district covering only 5%… I can only wish the rest of us in industry were so lucky!

The new high school might not be the root of the problem, but it is certainly a contributor and is a stellar example of the mismanagement of AAPS through their lack of ability to forecast trends and manage budgets.

Reference for salary: link to Ann Arbor News article

While there were clearly problems during the construction of Skyline, it’s simply incorrect to say that the new high school is at the root of the district’s financial problems. As the article noted, they have been facing multi-million dollar deficits for several years – long before Skyline came online.

The real problem is flat or declining funding from the state (AAPS’s per pupil allocation, set each year by the state Legislature, has declined nearly 9% in real terms since 1994). At the same time, many costs, including health care for current employees and retirees, have been going up much faster than inflation. AAPS teachers have to pay for increases in health care cost beyond the 5% the district will cover (teachers choose from a menu of plans, including MESSA plans that are the most expensive to employees). Right now, they are projecting an 8% annual increase in health costs, of which the district will pay 5%.

Retirement costs are controlled by a state agency, and the retirement system is regulated by the state legislature. Since the health portion of the state retirement system is “pay-as-you-go,” and costs are going up while the number of contributing employees is shrinking, the state teacher pension system is in the same bind as Social Security. The percentage of payroll which districts are required to contribute has been on a sharp upswing over the last ten years. Changes to the retirement rules in 2007 will not have a major impact for at least 10 years when people covered by the new rules begin to retire.

So, $14 million cut over the last three years, and even more before that. The schools have been “rationalizing” for many years now as funding has stagnated. The choices are getting harder, even if people are reluctant to talk about what might be on the chopping block. For their part, teachers have been making concessions for some years (while the economy supposedly “boomed”), so it’s not surprising that they are nervous about giving up even more that might never come back. But, unlike cars, demand for a good education has never been stronger – is cutting (real) teacher compensation year after year the best way of providing that good education?

We as a community and as a state need to sit down and think real hard about what we want from our schools and what it will cost. Taxes are the dues we pay to live in a civilized society, and public schools aren’t necessarily any less efficient than private businesses (and what is the standard – GM? AIG? Lehman Bros.?). The time for empty rhetoric has passed, and the time for a real commitment to invest in education has arrived. Too much is at stake.