New Erie School District teachers get raises as superintendent aims for competitive wages
The Erie School District is giving its teachers a salary boost to try to make the district more competitive in attracting and keeping new talent.
At a special meeting on Friday, the Erie School Board unanimously approved a 5.48% pay increase for teachers and other professionals this academic year and smaller raises in subsequent years, through the 2025-26 academic year.
The increases are included in a contract extension that the School Board approved with the 869-member Erie Education Association teachers' union, which also includes nurses and mental health specialists.
The new contract expires June 30, 2026. It adds two years to the previous three-year contract, which was set to expire on June 30, 2024.
The district and the EEA structured the pay increases so they most benefit new teachers and other professionals in the union, according to the district and the EEA. All teachers will see increases of some kind, but the newer teachers will get the most, according to district data.
Under the old contract, the starting salary for an Erie School District teacher with a bachelor's degree was $43,679 — the second-lowest among the 13 public school districts in Erie County, according to Erie School District figures.
The new contract increases the base starting salary to $46,827. That moves the starting base teacher salary in the Erie School District to the fifth-highest among the 13 school districts.
The highest starting base salary for a public school teacher in Erie County is $54,068, in the Fort LeBoeuf School District, and the lowest is $43,675, in the Wattsburg Area School District, according to Erie School District figures. The starting base salary is $49,783 in the 6,300-student Millcreek Township School District, the second-largest district in Erie County after the 10,000-student Erie School District.
Erie schools Superintendent Brian Polito said he had asked the School Board to explore a contract extension to make the district's starting wages more competitive. The EEA agreed to the changes, and ratified the new contract on Wednesday night. Its vote cleared the way for the Erie School Board to act.
Polito said the district lost 90 teachers to resignations over the past year, and he said about 86% of those teachers were on the low end of the salary scale.
Without increasing the base salaries, "we would just continue to churn through teachers," Polito said in an interview.
Erie School Board Vice President John Harkins, who chaired the special meeting, said the increases corrected salary disparities that the district has wanted to fix for years.
"It is very gratifying to be doing this today," Harkins said of the vote.
Harkins chaired the meeting in the absence of board President Lori Pickens. Two other school directors, Lauren Gillespie and Sumner Nichols, also were not present at the meeting, which started at 11 a.m. and lasted a matter of minutes.
Voting in favor of the contract were Harkins and the other five school directors who were present — Jay Breneman, Gwendolyn Cooley, Daria Devlin, Rosemary Sheridan and Leatra Tate.
Polito says increase in state aid makes raises possible
Polito said the district is finally able to afford the increases.
The state Department of Education removed the district from financial watch in September, ending the district's protracted financial crisis. State increases in basic education funding for 2022-23 further bolstered the district's finances to the most stable levels in years.
The 2022-23 state budget includes an additional $15.8 million in basic education funding for the Erie School District, including an estimated $6.6 million in Level Up funding designated for the state's poorest school districts. The increase lifted the district's total basic education allocation for 2022-23 to about $104 million. The state also increased the district's special education funding by $1.4 million, giving the district a total boost of $17.2 million in state funding.
Polito said the district will use the Level Up funding to help pay for the salary increases. He said the district will also explore trimming programs to pay for the increases. He said raising the teacher salaries to more competitive levels has been one of the school district's most urgent needs.
"With this extension and accompanying salary adjustment, Erie's Public Schools is signaling our commitment to our current teachers and our commitment to attracting more game-changing educators to our classrooms, now and in the future," Polito said in a statement. "Our teachers, our students and our community deserve nothing less."
The president of the EEA, Mary Theuerkauf, also praised the extension.
"We appreciate the Erie School District's efforts to re-invest in our schools, students, staff, and community," Theuerkauf said in a statement. "On behalf of the EEA, we are pleased that we were able to negotiate a contract extension where the district is providing a more competitive wage that will allow us to hire and retain more teachers. We look forward to continuing that work with the district to improve the quality of education in Erie."
What is the cost of the Erie teacher salary hikes?
The salary adjustments — the key elements of the extension — will cost the district a total of $6,724,460 over the course of the contract, according to district figures:
5.48% increase in 2022-23, retroactive to July 1, 2022 — $2,773,510
2.54% increase in 2023-24 — $1,356,250
2.39% increase in 2024-25 — $1,308,850
2.29% increase in 2025-26 — $1,285,850
The district and the EEA reached the agreement without state oversight. Until it was released from financial watch in September, the Erie School District had to follow a state-mandated financial improvement plan.
The state General Assembly required the plan in exchange for the district receiving $14 million in additional annual state aid to stay solvent. The district started getting the money in 2018.
The plan recommended that the district raise taxes by at least 2.46% a year to keep up with cost-of-living increases. Polito said he expects the district to try to follow that plan for tax increases as much as possible in the years ahead to help pay for the salary increases and other expenses.
In June, the School Board diverged from the focus on 2.46% and raised taxes by 4.45%. Polito asked for the tax increase — the largest at the district since a 7.3% hike in 2013 — so the district could start setting aside money to preserve student programs that launched during the pandemic but risk elimination once their federal funding runs out in September 2024.
The programs include additional mental health services, more teachers as well as after-school programs to help students who fell behind academically when in-person classes went online in 2020 and 2021. Polito said the district might have to cut back on some of the programs to offset the increase in teacher salaries.
For the owner of a home assessed at $100,000, the 4.45% increase cost $78.85. But blunting the increase was a rise in the homestead exemption for city homeowners. Gaming revenue helps fund the state's homestead tax exemption program, which reduces school taxes for the primary residences of homeowners enrolled in the program.
In Erie County, increased gaming revenue from casinos, including Presque Isle Downs & Casino in Summit Township, drove up the amount of the homestead exemption. The new exemption will reduce a city of Erie homeowner's taxes by $89, leading to a savings of $10.15 for the owner of a home assessed at $100,000.
Starting base salaries for public school teachers in Erie County
Fort LeBoeuf — $54,068
Harbor Creek — $50,372
Millcreek — $49,783
Union City — $47,390
Erie, new salary — $46,827
General McLane — $46,639
Fairview — $46,504
North East — $46,150
Girard — $45,875
Corry Area — $45,825
Iroquois — $45,197
Northwestern — $44,220
Erie, old salary — $43,679
Wattsburg Area — $43,675
Source: Erie School District. Salaries are for new teachers with bachelor's degrees.
Staff writer Valerie Myers contributed to this report.
Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNpalattella.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: New Erie School District teachers get raises as wages more competitive
