Henrico teachers’ pay plan creates confusion, anger

Confusion about their compensation plan has created a groundswell of activity this week among Henrico County Public Schools teachers.

Many teachers have said they don’t know what pay step they are on. They’re confused by the labyrinthine pay plan.

And, they’re mad.

At least two petitions are circulating that call for the school division to provide a transparent pay scale with steps that directly correlate with years of experience.

A petition on change.org had nearly 800 signatures on Friday morning, while a petition from the advocacy group HCPS SAFE-Safety, Accountability, Funding, & Equity (formerly HCPS Back to School Safely) had more than 300. A letter from the members of HCPS SAFE indicated that a “lack of transparency has created confusion and has demoralized staff.”

In conversations with the Citizen this week, several high-ranking school division officials admitted that the pay plan is confusing — it doesn’t directly correlate with years of experience as do the plans in neighboring divisions.

There is a page on the HCPS website titled “teacher salary scales,” but it’s empty. (Update: the page was updated after publication of this story on Friday afternoon.)

Salary compression

HCPS officials announced Monday that the school division is raising the starting pay for all new teachers with limited experience.

A teacher with limited experience and a bachelor's degree will be paid $50,464 starting this fall, and beginning teachers with a master's degree and limited experience will be paid $52,887.

Those increases have upset some teachers who feel their service has been overlooked. Several who spoke with the Citizen said that they have worked with HCPS for more than five years, and they make less now than what a new teacher will make starting in the fall.

But starting in the fall, these veteran teachers will earn higher salaries than the new teachers because a 5.06% pay raise for county employees will take effect July 1.

Morgan Nash, a world history teacher at Deep Run High School, said she and her husband (also a teacher) are considering whether or not they can afford to have a second child due to their salaries. They both love their jobs and wanted to be teachers their whole lives.

“I absolutely agree with paying new teachers high salaries, we all just want to be adjusted accordingly,” Nash told the Citizen. “We have heard nothing about salary compression. In fact, giving new teachers $52,000 is actually contributing to salary compression.”

In April 2018, the Henrico School Board and Board of Supervisors held a joint meeting to discuss employee pay. The two boards created a committee to study the salary compression of HCPS and county government employees.

As a short-term strategy to mitigate salary compression, the committee recommended restructuring the school division’s current placement scale for teachers. The restructured scales would have minimized compression by placing teachers on steps in three-year bands based on total teaching experience.

However, that recommendation was never implemented. The discussions about salary compression were tabled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to HCPS spokeswoman Eileen Cox.

This week, Henrico High School history teacher Rebecca Chipman emailed Superintendent Amy Cashwell and other division leaders about the retention proposals, expressing sentiments shared by many veteran teachers.

“I am happy to see you raise starting salaries for educators, but I am beyond disappointed at the lack of adjustment accordingly for experienced teachers,” Chipman wrote. “How do you expect to retain highly qualified teachers with salaries that little reflect our expertise? This is beyond disappointing and frustrating that HCPS is not valuing our experience and skills as veteran teachers.”

At a Henrico School Board work session on Thursday, Cashwell talked about the new teacher starting pay and alluded to the backlash from veteran teachers.

“Offering a competitive salary is critical to attracting new employees, and we've ensured that our starting pay is competitive with the region,” Cashwell said. “Does that mean that a new teacher will make more than a current teacher? No, it does not.”

She explained that starting in the fall, new teachers will not make more than veteran teachers because the new teachers will not receive the 5.06% raise, which is paid through both a step increase and a wage increase.

In its message to employees on Monday, HCPS also announced a $500 bonus for all returning full-time employees. The announcement didn’t sit well with many teachers, who called the bonus a slap in the face.

“Do we wish that amount was higher? Of course we do,” Cashwell said at the meeting Thursday. “But given limited funding, we determined that a modest bonus to say thank you for continuing to choose HCPS as an employer on top of the 5.06% raise was better.”

The local teachers union released a statement Tuesday criticizing the bonus.

“The exclusion of part-time workers, often the most economically precarious among us, from the retention bonus is rank classism in its ugliest possible manifestation. We cannot tolerate it,” wrote the Henrico Education Association. “Shame on Henrico County for treating some of its hardest working and least respected workforce as underclass that is unworthy of dignity.”

The pay step scale

Each step is 2.372% apart. But there is no automatic bump up to the next step based on how many years a teacher has been employed by HCPS.

Henrico operates on a unified pay plan, which means that HCPS employees and county government employees all receive the same pay step increases at the same time. However, there are exeptions. Sometimes the county grants market adjustments for specific job classifications in addition to the standard across-the-board raises. For example, all teachers received a 6.9% increase in 2021, which included a 4.8% market adjustment and a compounded 2% wage adjustment.

Where a teacher falls on the pay steps depends on any system-wide pay plan adjustments made after he or she was hired. So, the primary way for a teacher to get bumped up a step is for the county government to decide to give everybody a step increase.

That’s why a teacher who has been with HCPS for five years wouldn’t be on the same step as another teacher who had been with HCPS for five years during a different time period.

If a teacher was with HCPS during a five year span in which the county increased its wages (different from step increases) and gave only one step increase during that time, that teacher would end his or her five years one step above the starting point.

But another teacher who worked for HCPS during a five-year period in which the county decided to bump all of its employees up one step each year would be five steps above where he or she started.

Which step a teacher is hired on depends upon an entirely different pay scale – one that is not currently published online. That scale is used for new hires and is based on a teacher's years of experience outside of HCPS.

Teachers with limited experience typically are hired in on step 1. The higher starting pay for teachers with little experience, which was announced Monday, was configured by establishing a starting point for every new teacher with six or fewer years of experience at step 2 next year.

Step 2 correlates with a $50,464 salary for those with a bachelor's degree and $52,887 for those with a master's degree. Most current teachers are between steps 2 and 4, according to data provided by HCPS (shown in the graph below). Those steps pay between $50,464 and $55,426.

There are 39 teachers between steps 27 and 32, but the data provided did not indicate which steps those 39 teachers were on.

The last step, 32, pays $101,958 for those with a bachelor's degree and $106,853 for those with a master's degree. It is unclear whether any teachers are on step 32.

Career ladder added for certain teachers

There also is now another way for teachers to earn step increases: the newly introduced “career ladder." The initiative will newly recognize teachers with doctoral degrees and certain certifications with salary increases. The program will be available for a limited number of teachers that will provide professional learning micro-credentialing and specializations. The division will provide salary adjustments based on advanced professional credentials.

The adopted budget for next fiscal year includes $3.1 million for the career ladder initiative. More information on the career ladder program will be announced later this month.

The statement released by the HEA Tuesday, which was penned by its collective bargaining committee, criticized the career ladder cohorts, which members said had “limited capacity and limited clarity.”

“These inadequate, desperate measures belie a not-so-hidden crisis: our division will be woefully understaffed in the upcoming school year,” the HEA wrote. “Only a union negotiated contract can ensure working conditions that will truly promote staff retention.”

The HEA does not have collective bargaining rights at this time.

Rewarding, retaining and recruiting

Henrico Schools officials have said publicly that they're proud of their teacher compensation plans.

“Employee compensation, supports, and health and wellness have never been a higher priority for me and for this (School) Board,” Cashwell said Thursday. “We truly understand the many challenges our Henrico school employees have heroically risen to over the past few years and we remain grateful for the work that they do in the service of our students and our community.”

Cashwell also touched on the two new “wellness days'' added to the 2022-2023 calendar, which are additional paid days off. The dates have not yet been decided upon or approved, but the School Board is expected to approve the days.

Another strategy included in Monday’s announcement is a $500 referral bonus. Through Aug. 15, staff can submit an employee referral form for a full-time teacher, exceptional education instructional assistant, nurse, psychologist, social worker, bus driver, custodian, or school nutrition services staff member who will be new to HCPS next year.

School division officials noted that the longevity increases, granted last year to teachers with more than 10 years experience as of January 2021, have helped mitigate salary compression.

Officials also noted the division’s “competitive” benefits package. Again, HCPS employees won’t see any increase next year in their group health premiums because the rising costs are being absorbed by HCPS.

“I am so proud that Henrico continues to lead the region in teacher pay,” Cashwell said. “Last fiscal year, even with minimal increases in the state education budget and there was financial uncertainty still with the pandemic, our county leadership, our School Board, our Board of Supervisors worked to produce a budget that provided a 6.9% teacher pay increase along with longevity increases for this current school year… When you couple that with this year's 5.06% increase, the commitment to investing in our employees by this [School] Bschoard is evident.”

HCPS is expected to update its pay plan documents online Friday afternoon in an effort to provide more clarity.

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Anna Bryson is the Henrico Citizen’s education reporter and a Report for America corps member. Make a tax-deductible donation to support her work, and RFA will match it dollar for dollar. Sign up here for her free weekly education newsletter.