The Boston Business Journal has just published a list of the 40 Massachusetts towns and cities with the best-paid teachers in 2016.
Newton does not appear on the list. I wondered if this might have been an error so I contacted David Harris at the BBJ. He said he had double checked because he was surprised too but that Newton fell somewhere in the fifties.
In this day and age, new teachers often have tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to repay – an issue that most communities have been slow to recognize. At the very least, we need to be creative about how to attract and retain the best candidates/teachers. A few ideas: a healthy workplace, cutting edge teaching resources, excellent professional development with teacher input, the inclusion of teacher input on issues that affect their daily life (such as outsourcing custodians), differentiation of professional development so that the needs of new and veteran teachers are met.
At this point in time, NPS is in the most competitive market for top candidates that we’ve ever encountered. Just 12 years ago, we were ranked 9th in the state.
There may be some further investigation of the parameters that the Boston Business Journal used that might put Newton into a higher teacher pay category.
See this report:
https://www.newton.k12.ma.us/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=6223&dataid=8734&FileName=Personnel%20Report%2010_24_16.pdf
This lists every STAFF member and their salary. Of the 2103.6 FTE employees, 511.2 of those are aides, who are paid at the lower end of the payscale, in the $20,000 range. Of the remaining 1592.4 FTE, the salaries range from $45,000 to $165,000. I didn’t do the math to come up with an average, because I don’t have the time to input all of those salaries and divide by 1592.4.
Maybe someone wants to take a stab at it.
Then there’s this report that further breaks down all of the fte employees by category, including secretaries, aides, custodians, cafeteria workers, substitute teachers, and regular teachers:
https://www.newton.k12.ma.us/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=6223&dataid=8733&FileName=Staffing%20Reconciliation%20Report.pdf
If you want to take those numbers, and just determine the number of teachers delivering instruction, that total is 747.1.
It would be interesting to determine if the BBJ included aides, secretaries, substitutes, etc. in the average salary.
I bet that if you took all of the salaries of the 747.1 teachers and got the average, that Newton would place in the top 40 paying communities in Massachusetts.
There are 321 schools so 50 is not as bad as it may initially sound: 84% by rank.
But this is the “average” pay and not a pay scale comparison. So it’s really just identifying the schools that pay the most, which is different from which teachers get “the best pay”. Since pay is dependent on time of service and level of education, the analysis is really a combination of pay scales, time of service, and level of education and doesn’t necessarily mean a Newton teacher could go to a “better pay” school and actually get paid more.
You can view a lot of stats directly on Mass’ web site:
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/
Pay scale comparison is an extremely important piece of an analysis and I agree that the mean as a statistical measure can be misleading. That being said, top candidates who consider Newton also consider the nearby comparable communities (Brookline, Needham, Belmont, the W’s). That’s our competition, not all 321 districts.
Also, school systems have been slow to realize that new young candidates are much more likely to have significant student debt than previous generations had. As a young teacher, my total student debt amounted to 20% of my first-year’s salary. My son’s loans amounted to 140% of his first year’s salary.
As a Newton resident, it is neither my business nor responsibility to address the compensation issues of the Newton Teachers association membership. If the NTA is upset about their standing on the compensation list of statewide teachers, they should have that issue addressed by the person who is receiving full time pay to do so, the president of the NTA: Michael Zilles. Michael Zilles and the school committee, not school parents, and certainly not school
children, are neither responsible for, nor should they be involved in the negotiation or lobbying for these contracts. Newton school parents are not required,
nor should they be requested to become involved with toxic, divisive contract issues,
that’s what the NTA union and Michael Zilles as elected head of that union are in place for.
The NTA and its union is not involved in the compensation issues of Newton residents, nor should we be involved with their issues. The NTA, and the NTA only is responsible for addressing their own pay.
Paul, please. This thread was not initiated by the NTA nor did it provide any information to Greg about this issue. Greg posted this thread. He’s the president of the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce so I’m sure he receives the Boston Business Journal.
@Jane-
I fully understand that and did not mean to imply that the NTA is or was involved. Rather than going down the usual rabbit hole of he/said
she/said, and the standard omission
of benefits- health care etc etc, and more favorable data that usually happens when considering the real dollar value of compensation, i elected to remind readers that the NTA is responsible for its own members, every tub on its own bottom. The numerical placement on the state teacher compensation list is the result of the effectiveness of the NTA’s union representation or lack thereof
and has nothing to do with the support or lack thereof for teachers from
Newton residents. Incidentally, every college graduate in this day and age is saddled with student loans, not just teacher candidate graduates. Graduates can thank government bureaucrats who,
during the Obama, not Trump administrations, discovered that
the student loan business is quite lucrative and has been making money off the backs of our children for sometime.So borrow away, its one of the few business models the
Federal government can point to that actually works
And all this time, I bought that line about the city not having a certain amount of money! I’m going to sign Mike Zilles up for some arm wrestling lessons. 😉
@Greg, have you given any thought to retracting your headline and offering an apology? I still haven’t seen any evidence to justify “Newton teachers NOT among the state’s best paid”.
Like most schools Newton’s pay scale varies depending on education and duration of service, so a teacher with a Master’s degree salary starts around $51k and maxes out at $89k after 15 years. So the “average pay” of the school is probably more influenced by the teacher service duration and education than the pay scale difference between schools.
Moreover, I looked to compare Newton to Brookline pay and they weren’t that much different by salary (didn’t research benefits, etc.). The same range in Brookline is $53k to $90k.
@David: In the context of the BBJ report the headline is accurate. The fact that you and/or others are pointing out different ways to look at those numbers is terrific and exactly the kind of thing we encourage on Village 14 so thanks for your participation.
Paul-I just heard a promo on NPR for a segment they are going to air this afternoon. It will focus on the effect of student debt on medical care -the trickle down impact it’s having on medical care in significant parts of the country. Young doctors are choosing to work in certain areas and not in others in order to pay off their student loans. So, yes, public education is by no means the only profession affected by this issue-it’s a huge generational concern that has the capacity to affect all aspects of life in the coming years.
I know I’m commenting on something old….but I saw a job opening in Newton Schools. I’m out of state, and for Massachusetts, I always check the salary guides. I know Mass is expensive. I saw Newton’s salary schedule, and moved on. You’re starting teachers in the same ballpark as Virginia and Pennsylvania—not as expensive as your market. I see that a lot in Massachusetts. Some places pay well, but many others have payscales similar to the south. That doesn’t work in an expensive state.
An article in today’s Boston globe on the Dedham teachers’ strike included key information that I would like to know about Newton. I’m especially interested in the first-step pay because I can compare these figures to my own salary.
For Dedham:
According to data provided by the Dedham schools, its teacher salaries ranked in the middle or higher among 41 communities in the area. First-step pay for a Dedham teacher with a master’s degree was $56,746 in 2017-18, third highest behind Boston and Brookline, according to the figures.
First-step pay for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree was $51,307, which ranked fifth behind Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, and Weston. The average salary for a Dedham teacher in 2017 topped $82,000, according to the state.
The salary scale is more complicated than just the first step. You have to look at all the steps and how the entire salary scale compared with comparable communities. Then you have to realize that people no longer move up on the scale after 15 years-typically when a teacher is in his/her late 30’s. After that you only receive the COLA for the next 25 years.
Newton’s teachers actually rank 85th in the state. The retainment level at the HS level is starting to become concerning, even if retainment at the middle and elementary levels is quite good.
Also worth mentioning that the age distribution of Newton teachers is quite similar to that of peer districts (Brookline, Wellesley etc), so it’s not like NPS is paying less for less qualified teachers, they’re just paying qualified teachers worse than peer districts.
Source: http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/agestaffing.aspx