Pottstown OKs 3-Year $1 Million Pact With Teachers

With a unanimous vote Thursday night, the Pottstown School Board approved a three-year contract with the teachers union that will add just over $1 million to the budget over the course of the contract.

The Federation of Pottstown teachers voted in favor of the contract on Tuesday, said School District Solicitor Stephen Kalis.

No increases to the pay scale are included in the first and third years of the contract, instead putting more money in teachers pockets by moving them up one step on the existing pay scale, Kalis explained.

In the second year of the contract, increased pay rates are included in the salary steps, but not uniform increases, said Business Manager Maureen Jampo.

Also during the second year of the contract, teachers will also see a move forward in the steps, but not until half the school year has passed.

The higher pay scale and forward step motion averages out to a 2.13 percent pay hike in the contract's second year, said Jampo.

Robert Decker, a high school math teacher who spoke Thursday on behalf of the Federation, said like in the previous contract negotiation "a lot of work was put into more evenly distributing the increases across the scales."

What he means is that in the contract's second year, the pay scale increases are tilted in favor of newer teachers who will see their pay increase more quickly than in the past when many of the larger gains were enjoyed by those with more years of service at the higher pay scales.

One reason both sides of the negotiating table pursued this goal is the high teacher turnover the district has seen in recent years, years in which Pottstown was reported to have the lowest average teacher salary in Montgomery County.

That, combined with a teacher shortage as fewer and fewer college graduates opt to pursue a career in education, has resulted in many Pottstown teachers being lured away to higher-paying districts.

On the same day this contract was approved, USA Today reported passage of a bill in Illinois to raise the minimum teacher pay to $40,000 by 2023, in part to addresses a shortage of teachers in that state.

State law requires Pennsylvania school districts to pay teachers at least $18,500 a year — a rate that hasn’t been updated in 30 years.

In June, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported "the average teacher in Pennsylvania earned $67,535 per year during the 2017-2018 school year, according to a PA Post analysis of Department of Education data. But some 3,200 teachers, mostly in rural districts and small cities, make less than $45,000 annually, according to the Department of Education."

In 2017, the average Pottstown teacher salary was just over $58,000.

"In his February budget address, (Gov. Tom) Wolf called for a one-time, $14 million allocation to bring the teacher pay floor to $45,000 per year. Of the 500 districts statewide, 180 would receive subsidies under Wolf’s plan to give raises to teachers currently making less than that," the Capital-Star reported.

The proposal was not adopted by the state legislature in the final budget.

Low pay is one of the factors contributing the fewer students choosing teaching as a career. 

Last month, the Observer-Reporter newspaper reported that "since 2009, the number of newly issued in-state instructional teaching certificates has dropped by 71 percent, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education."

"Pennsylvania used to issue licenses to more than 14,000 new teachers annually. In 2016-17, the state issued 4,412," reporter Karen Mansfield wrote.  

Last summer, the Pennsylvania Department of Education awarded about $2 million in grants to eight universities to develop and implement yearlong residency programs for teachers and principals, in order to increase and retain teachers and school leaders, according to the newspaper report.

Last week, Pottstown Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez said the district hired 44 new teachers for the school year that starts Monday, which he said is "one of the largest freshman classes" in district history.

"If an organization is to grow, it has to be stable, consistent and focused," Decker said during his remarks to the school board. "This year we have one of the largest group of new teachers we've ever seen. When employees feel valued, it reduces the endless cycle of hiring and training."

Contract Specifics

Jampo said the overall financial impact of the new teacher contract on the budget is $1,030,000 over three years.

In the first year of the pact, which begins with the first day of school Monday, the financial impact is $272,000. In the second year, the fiscal impact is $300,000 and rises to $447,000 in the third and final year.

Kalis said the hourly rate for non-instructional duties, but not including extra curricular activities, was raised from $29 to $30, the first time it has been raised in 12 years, said Decker.

The contract also raises from $40 to $50 per day the amount that retiring teachers get paid for unused sick days. That is the first time that rate has been raised in 25 years, Decker said. The maximum number of days that can be claimed remains at 300 days.

The contract also contains a retirement incentive that offers a $5,500 premium in the contract's first
year and in the second and third year would deposit a lump sum of $25,000 in a retirement account, a measure which Kalis said saves taxpayers $30,000 per teacher.

Medical insurance remains essentially the same, with teachers contributing 20 percent of the premium and 5 percent of the prescription premium, with no co-pay. However the contract does add a program that allows teachers to buy more medicine in bulk from on-line companies, but will cost teachers more, said Decker.

Teachers who get their health insurance through a spouse will be paid 25 percent of what their premium would have been had they taken on the district's lowest cost health plan, said Kalis.

The contract expires on Aug. 31, 2022.