Data show Fresno teachers have better wages, benefits than comparable workers | Opinion
Teachers are essential to modern society. They most certainly deserve to be paid fairly for their work, as we hear frequently during labor disputes. How do we decide what “fair” means?
We all wish we could pay a million dollars a year to the local kindergarten teacher who puts a bandage on your child’s knee at recess, but we’d rapidly run out of money to do anything else and each teacher would have hundreds of kids in a class. Financial realities mean we have to find a balance. Every dollar put into a paycheck is a dollar that can’t be used to pay support staff, buy new instructional materials, run buses, provide programs underserved kids, or fund any number of other vital programs and services.
Finding that balance point is exactly what Fresno Unified School District and Fresno Teacher’s Association are trying to do now. If they can’t do that, the FTA may strike, damaging the education of kids much as school shutdowns did. Tens of millions and the education of our kids is at stake, so we need to look at data to make an objective decision.
First we need to decide what “fair” pay is. The Economic Policy Institute’s annual study says we should provide “teachers with compensation commensurate with that of other similarly educated and experienced professionals.” Fortunately the Census Bureau provides data we can use to find out what “similarly educated” residents of Fresno County make and publishes that data by educational attainment.
The California Department of Education publishes data on education levels by district. The latest data available shows 64.15% of Fresno Unified teachers have a bachelor’s degree and 35.85% have more advanced degrees. Weighting the Census Bureau numbers accordingly (and adding to accommodate a teacher’s additional year of training) we see the median Fresno County resident with education comparable to a FUSD teacher makes $74,155.
Opinion
To look at actual teacher pay, the best data source would be FUSD’s own payroll records. Fortunately we have those, obtained using a Public Records Act request and published on the Transparent California website. The data show us the median total pay of an FUSD teacher in 2022 was $99,144. But that doesn’t give us a complete picture of how a teacher’s pay compares to a private worker. Most private workers consider health care and retirement benefits important, so we need to look at that as well.
According to Vanguard the average company contributes 4% of the employee’s salary to a 401K retirement account. Adding a 6.2% normal Social Security contribution gets us to a total contribution of 10.2% of pay. A FUSD teacher will have 29.93% of their salary contributed to their retirement this year. That’s 19.73% more contributed toward retirement than private workers are given.
A private worker fortunate enough to have that much put into their 401K over a 30-year career that would likely end up with more than $3 million. A private worker wanting to fund their own retirement equally by themselves would need to make about $119,000/year to match the take-home of an FUSD teacher.
What about health care? According to the Kaiser Foundation, in 2023 the average private employee paid $550/month for health care. Which means anything less than that a FUSD teacher pays for health-care insurance is more money they take home.
Using real numbers from verifiable sources, we see a Fresno Unified teacher makes about $45,000 more than a comparably educated Fresno County resident.
Looking into the future, the current FTA “best offer” asks for a 13.26% raise retroactive to July 2022 and another 2% per year through 2025-26. Add to that a $10,000 flat bonus this year, $7,500 for each of the next two years, and another $5,000 bonus in the final year. If we apply this schedule to the current median of $99,144, in 2025-26 a private worker would have to make $149,000 to equal a FUSD teacher.
The question of whether the current pay is “fair” or requires more is up to parents. Do we spend our money increasing the size of paychecks, or improving the education of kids?Joe Biden says “don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.”
It’s not my position to tell Fresno parents what they value. These are just facts to help in that decision. Parents need to decide whether higher pay for adults is more valuable to them than improving the education of their kids.
Todd Maddison is the research director for Transparent California , which is a database of salary and pension information for public employees in California. He is a founding member of the Parent Association advocacy group, and a longtime activist in improving K-12 education. Maddison lives in Oceanside.
