Union calls on Pa. legislators to reset salary floor for teachers
Mar. 2—HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania's largest teachers union is calling on state lawmakers to boost starting salaries and wages for classroom professionals and support personnel toward improving a shallow candidate pool for public schools.
The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) seeks a statutory minimum salary of $60,000 for certified teachers and $20 hourly for support staff like bus drivers and cafeteria workers.
The minimum salary for teachers allowed by state law is $18,500 and is unchanged since 1989. That's not a salary public schools are paying out, however.
The average starting salary for Pennsylvania teachers was $46,991 in 2020-21, according to the National Education Association. A salary analysis by the PSEA identified approximately 50 schools offering starting salaries below $40,000.
State Sen. Judith Schwank, D-Berks, circulated a legislative memo on her intent to reintroduce a bill this session to raise the statutory minimum to $45,000, which falls in line with the current average starting salary. Social workers, psychologists and therapists would fall among the professional educators covered in her proposal.
"This proposal demonstrates respect for professional educators by providing them with a wage that is more in line with what similarly educated professionals earn," Schwank wrote.
The state Senate Education Committee hosted a hearing this week to discuss labor shortages in schools. PSEA President Rich Askey emphasized that schools are struggling to hire across multiple disciplines as fewer prospective teachers and staff enter the workforce.
He pointed to how in-state teacher certifications plummeted 64% from 2010 to 2021. For the first time, there were more long-term substitutes working on emergency permits than there were new teachers certified in 2020-21: 5,958 compared to 5,440.
Local schools and union staff negotiate salaries and benefits. Askey urged lawmakers to set the tone for shifting the tenor of those negotiations toward incentivizing current teachers to stay in their careers and entice new ones into education by adjusting the statutory minimum salary.
"We would be naive to believe that compensation does not play a role in a young person's career planning, particularly when we consider the significant costs associated with becoming a teacher," Askey said, noting a National Education Association study that found 45% of today's educators accumulated average student debt totaling $55,580.
It's not just projected salary that might give pause to prospective teaching candidates, it's the full scope of finances involved that's proving worrisome.
A new report by a consortium of teacher advocates in Pennsylvania found that wages adjusted for inflation have been flat while the cost of in-state tuition more than tripled in the past three decades.
"This leads to a so-called 'wage penalty' of 15.2% for Pennsylvania teachers; in other words, college graduates who pursue teaching as a career earn, on average, 15.2% less than their classmates who are employed in other fields," according to #PANeedsTeachers, a report completed by Teach Plus Pennsylvania and the National Center on Education & the Economy.
"Teacher pay must become more competitive with other fields that require a bachelor's degree, both through increased and equitable state funding of education to support local pay increases as well as through targeted financial incentives for teachers in high-need subjects and schools," according to written testimony submitted by Zakiya Steward, Amy Morton, Laura Boyce and Jason Dougal on behalf of Teach Plus Pennsylvania and the National Center on Education and the Economy.
