South Dakota is 'inflation plus $5K' away from 'great' teacher compensation, school official says

Is public education failing? Do students face more challenges today than ever before? Is there a teacher shortage in South Dakota? Is teacher pay “great” in South Dakota? Do school districts value parents’ input?

These are some of the questions Sioux Falls School District superintendent Jane Stavem and her fellow administrators hear a lot in the public conversation, and that they attempted to answer in a Downtown Sioux Falls Rotary meeting over lunch on Monday.

Rotarians also posed some questions for the leaders of the largest school district in South Dakota, including about how the district is recruiting more teachers, increasing teacher diversity and seeing growth in the community.

Here’s what the administrators had to say.

Public education has 'many points of pride'

It’s false that public education is failing, assistant superintendent Teresa Boysen said, pointing to the district's “many points of pride” that she said measure its success.

Boysen pointed to 17 recent National Merit finalists from the district and 83 state champions in athletics; that Sioux Falls’ ACT scores are higher than the state and national average; that dual credit participation has risen in the district; recent fine arts awards and state championships in debate, oral interpretation, visual arts and one-act plays; and more.

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She also touted the district’s Spanish immersion program, college and career pathways, the introduction of high school girls’ wrestling and softball, along with middle school soccer, girls’ wrestling and performance dance, as well as the new community learning center model that has given an additional 500 students a place to go after school this fall and introduced more tutoring options.

‘We’ve got to break that cycle’ on substance abuse

Assistant superintendent Jamie Nold said both “yes and no” when asked by Stavem if students face more challenges today than ever before.

“It is true in a lot of ways, and yet there are some things that stay the same throughout time,” Nold said.

Nold went on to explain how the vast majority of youth in the community are doing a “great job,” but that there are some obstacles in their way, such as attendance, substance abuse and mental health.

Attendance has gone down at schools nationwide, Nold explained while noting a majority of students are on track. He added the district recently received a $1.5 million, three-year grant addressing chronic absenteeism that helped hire four more liaisons and a recovery teacher to tackle the issue, boosting the district's workforce of more than 80 counselors, a dozen social workers and a dozen liaisons.

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Substance abuse is a significant issue that happens with kids, Nold said, as more vaping products and marijuana become accessible to youth.

“The vast majority of our kids are doing an incredible job” of not vaping, he said. “Just because (some students) vape does not make them bad kids, but we’ve got to break that cycle in there somewhere because we do know that it’s not good for health.”

Mental health is also an obstacle for students, Nold said, noting part of the solution is awareness

“To be able to make it something that is not shunned, it’s not something in the darkness, but it’s something that’s brought out in the light (that) we can talk more about has truly helped our youth,” Nold said.

Support for each of those “obstacles” that the district provides include a community engagement center with clothing, supplies and community resources for families at Axtell Park; mental health partnerships with Avera Health, Southeastern Behavioral Health and Lutheran Social Services; mentoring programs; and, a monthly Family Forum series on topics that help families, Nold said.

Teacher shortage an issue locally, statewide and nationally

Yes, there is a teacher shortage in South Dakota, and that includes Sioux Falls, district human resources director Becky Dorman said.

Dorman said that shortage was exacerbated by the pandemic, by politics and by workforce trends of people not going into teaching or the service industry as much as they once did.

As of the first week in August, there were 183 open teaching positions across the state, including 11 in Sioux Falls, which had positions open for a middle school language arts teacher, middle school Spanish teacher, four special education positions, four elementary education positions and a JROTC instructor.

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That “caused us to staff things differently than we had planned,” Dorman said, noting some instructional coaches moved back into classrooms and the district also “supported” some people who were interested in teaching special education by way of the South Dakota Department of Education’s alternative certification program.

The district works to recruit teachers by way of social media, word-of-mouth, university partnerships and its own teacher pathway program to get students interested in teaching, Dorman said.

Rotarian Wendy Mamer asked about how the district is intentionally recruiting a more diverse teaching staff as the student population is approximately 42% non-white as of the latest count in Oct. 2022, and the district’s teacher diversity is at 5.33%, as of the latest count in August.

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Stavem pointed to staff diversity rates rising year-over-year — it rose to 5.33% this August from 5.08% last year — and strategies the district uses to help new employees whose first language isn’t English.

Dorman and Stavem also explained that teachers from outside of South Dakota or outside of the U.S. might promote the district to other teachers by word-of-mouth, which creates a pipeline for more diverse applicants to consider Sioux Falls.

Inflation, plus $5,000

It’s false that teacher compensation is “great” in South Dakota, district business manager Todd Vik said.

He explained how the teacher pay landscape has changed since the Blue Ribbon Task Force convened in 2016 to pass a half-cent sales tax boost to increase what was then last-in-the-nation teacher salary.

Vik referenced data by the National Education Association and South Dakota Teacher Compensation Review Board that showed South Dakota is still near the bottom of the list, but not last, and still last on teacher pay among its neighboring states.

Adding just $5,000 to the state’s average teacher salary in 2016, or now, would move South Dakota up in the rankings, Vik explained.

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“But, other states pay more too each year,” Vik said. “When you think of how we’re just $5,000 away, we’re just inflation plus $5,000 (away), is really what that looks like.”

Vik also gave an overview of how the Sioux Falls School District’s average teacher pay and compensation grew during that time, with the average teacher pay rising 29% during that time and the starting teacher pay rising 46.7% during that time.

School district values parents

It’s also true that school districts value parents and community partners, Stavem said.

“Now it might seem that that should be pretty obvious that that’s true, but what you hear nationally is that parent rights have gone away, that school districts don’t value parents, and I will tell you that is absolutely false,” Stavem said.

Stavem said the district has multiple ways people can contribute to it, including by way of partnerships, working with organizations, mentoring and more.

“That’s what makes things happen that are good for kids in Sioux Falls,” she said. “So when you hear some of those things that nationally we don’t value our community and our parents, that is absolutely false.”

Stavem also mentioned at the beginning of the talk that the myth of there being cat litter in school bathrooms is just that — a myth — and told the Rotarians to say “no” if they hear similar rumors or misinformation spread about public schools.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Sioux Falls School District administrators answer questions at Rotary