Looking further into the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) employment practices, I wanted to see how their teacher salaries compared to the salaries of the administrators.
EPISD publishes a set schedule explaining how much money new teachers are paid. By the way, teachers that have been working for the district since before 2008 are paid slightly differently.
Teachers
A new teacher with five years of teaching experience is paid $46,536.82 this year. Teachers with a master’s degree receive $1,000 more and those with a doctorate get another $1,000 more ($2,000 total). I believe that the contract requires the teacher to work 187 days, making their work year 9 months. That works out to $249.00 a day for the teacher without an advanced degree.
We know that good teachers spend time at home grading papers and preparing for class. Some teachers dig into their own pockets to buy supplies and materials for their classes.
Administrators
A budget analyst must have a bachelor’s and five years of experience to start. They get paid a minimum of $248.85 and top out at $353.17 daily. The job requires 227 days of work, yielding between $56,488.95 and $80,169.59 per year.
An instructional applications analyst provides “training to campus personnel and offering technical support in the use of hardware and software on campus”. They must have a bachelor’s, a teaching certificate, and two years of teaching experience. This is a 227 day job that pays $230.43 a day to start and tops out at $326.79 daily, yielding between $52,307.61 and $74,181.33 for the employee.
You get the idea.
Upside down
Unfortunately the job categories at EPISD reward good teachers by promoting them out of the classroom. If you were a young teacher that needed money to support a family which would you pick — $46.5 thousand a year to teach in the classroom, or $52.3 thousand a year to teach other teachers how to use their computers?
By the way, in case you think that the situation gets better as the teacher gets more experience, a classroom teacher with a master’s and 30 years of teaching experience tops out at $60,269.65 per year.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
How does this compare with other districts?
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I don’t know.
I suspect that some of our regular readers will give us some guidance.
I am not trying to single out EPISD, but suspect that this is pretty common.
Brutus
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Sounds like the typical government way. The administrative class is the privileged class. Administrators are the overlords. Teachers are the serfs. It would be interesting to index teacher pay against admin pay for other school districts in both Texas and other states.
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Again, I will qualify this with: I do not speak for EPISD. I will also qualify this with: Yes, I know that many people think anyone in central office is an overpaid underworked administrator. So if you were going to say that as a reply, save yourself the typing. I have heard it before.
Let’s look at a few things here:
Without going into the whole “serf vs. overlords” debate, I think almost all organizations from the military to hospitals, to banks, to police, to well, any organization pretty much, has layers. (Can you think of one that is flat that is not in a communist country?) Typically, the management layer gets more than the non-management layer. When you go to McDonald’s for instance, the Manager is pulling down a larger salary than the fry cook. That does not mean the fry cook does not work less than the manager..it is the way the organization is set up. A nurse working in a doctor’s office makes less than the doctor. However, the nurse makes more than the receptionist. I would think all three would say they work the hardest and deserve more money.
I suspect that Diane Natalicio at UTEP makes much more than the average professor, as do the deans, as do the provosts. etc. Does that mean that the President is more important than the professors? Probably not. It is just the way management is set up in most organizations. The Chief of Police makes more than the rookie patrol man, or even the 30 year Sargent. Same for detectives, etc.
So can we just all agree that management makes more than the non-management? Usually, a management position requires an advanced degree and an additional certification. Maybe you want to pay everyone the same ..but you wont be able to attract the brightest and the best to management, which by the way includes principals and assistance principals. This is not professional sports where the team players make more than the coaches. (However, the owners still make more than all of them.) You think that Juan Cabrera would have come to EPISD if they offered him $249.00 a day with a year round contract to start? Of course not. Does he work harder than a first grade teacher? Maybe so, maybe not.
Okay, with that being said, and as I have said before, there are people at all levels that probably do not pull their weight and do not deserve the pay they get. All levels. They should sell real estate and not be collecting a tax payer salary. I agree.
Now, lets look at this article:
Let me say first: All teachers deserve more than they are paid. I think everyone agrees with that.
Are EPISD teachers paid less or more than their colleagues in other districts?
According to this Texas Association of School Boards report they are paid close to the average for the region:
Click to access tchr_highlights_landing.pdf
The average salary for all teachers in the area is $50,121 per year, which is about what all the other Texas metro areas average mas or menos a few hundred bucks. Teachers in school districts with >50K students make about $51,370 per year, so we are actually a bit lower.
When you say that a teacher makes $249.00 a day or a 187 day work year is the beginning of the picture. Teachers can, and do in many cases, get extra stipends for doing other things, such as coaching football teams, being department heads and sponsoring things like the yearbook. Teachers can also make extra money during the summer by teaching summer school, going to professional development, or writing curriculum. While these are not guaranteed positions and not all teachers get to do that, many do. So a teacher could easily add $3000 to his or her yearly salary by doing this type of work. In EPISD, the district pays new recruit teachers (or did at least) bonus money if they were in a high demand field, such as a science teacher, a special needs teacher, a math teacher, or a bilingual ed teacher. That “signing bonus” was not unsubstantial. If I recall it was $5000. All these things can and do add up Many teachers take advantage of these opportunities but they do not show up on the “salary schedule” because it is not mandated in their jobs.
Many districts, including EPISD will help teachers pay to go back to college to get their higher degrees. While this is not “salary” per se, it is money that is saved by the the teacher, who ends up getting a degree that gives them more cash over the course of their careers.
Again, it is not as much as administration, but you cannot look at a single number and draw a conclusion.
You pointed out that the per day rate for the position in admin was very similar to the daily rate of the teacher. The only difference is that the admin works more days per year.
On a side note, here is something that I have noticed here in El Paso:
There seems to be an underlying current in all of these “Lets Compare Salaries” type articles that seems to give the subtle message that we do not wish, as a community to reward people who advance in their careers:
Yeah, we want you to get an advanced degree, but we don’t want to pay for it.
Yeah, we want you to be in management, but we want the people that are managed to get more than the managers.
Don’t think for a minute that kids at UTEP don’t notice that type of thinking. That may be the exact reason there are the yearly “Smart kids are leaving El Paso for Dallas and Austin” articles. The kids see what happens when you try to advance. In Austin, you are welcomed and promoted. In El Paso you are made the butt of a joke in a newspaper article.
We do deserve better Brutus.
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Graph of school principal salaries in EPISD
http://www1.salary.com/TX/El-Paso/School-Principal-salary.html
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Tim,
As usual you make good points.
I don’t know anyone that disagrees with your point that management should get paid more than the workers.
Also I don’t object to what the other guy earns.
My point is that our system takes good teachers out of the classroom.
Brutus
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Well, that is true to a point. However, there are only so many “management positions” to be had. Also, you are assuming that all good teachers want to leave the classroom which is not the case at all. A lot of folks enjoy the summer breaks and do not wish to work year round. Everyone teacher could use a raise. But who pays?
There used to be a system in Texas called the “Career Ladder” which provided extra money for teachers who met some type of expectation, be it attended a set amount of professional development, or became mentor teachers or the like. It was, I think, at the most a $5000 a year stipend. There were three steps on the career ladder with step one getting a $1K raise, and step 3 being the $5K raise per year.
However, the Texas legislature ended the program. (Remember that a huge chunk of funding comes from the state, so if the state cuts programs, districts have to cut them as well.)
So, want to see teachers paid more? Ask the state legislature, who right now is down right hostile to education, to make it so.
Good luck with that.
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Brutus:
“FEDUP” seems to be one that disagrees…
grin
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The Texas Minimum Salary schedule for teachers (EPISD is well above this)
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=25769806050
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This is an interesting infographic on the highest paid public employee salary in each state:
http://deadspin.com/infographic-is-your-states-highest-paid-employee-a-co-489635228
In Texas, a football coach is the highest paid public employee.
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