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VICTOR JOECKS: Starting pay for new teachers went up $8,400 in six years. CCSD’s teacher shortage is now worse.

Teacher shortages are yet another education problem that more money didn’t fix.

Effective Dec. 1, the starting salary for teachers in the Clark County School District is $43,000. Their total compensation is around $64,000.

If that sounds like a lot of money for a new college graduate, you’re right. That’s especially true because teachers work around 189 days a year . New teachers may be required to participate in five additional orientation days.

Teachers don’t have to work a full eight hours either. Contractually, teachers have a seven hour and 11 minute workday, including a duty-free 30-minute lunch. That means starting teachers make more than $49 per hour of working in total compensation.

Teacher pay wasn’t always this high. In January 2016, the district gave in to union demands and boosted starting teacher pay from $34,600 to $40,900. It wasn’t just entry pay that went up. The top of the salary schedule went from $72,300 to $90,900. It’s now $95,600 a year. That figure soars to well more than $130,000 if you look at total compensation. That’s over $100 per contracted hour of work.

At the time, both district and union officials assured the public that pay hikes would ease the district’s shortage. During the 2015-16 school year, the district said it had around 800 open teaching jobs. Fast-forward almost six years. Last month, the district had 842 teaching vacancies.

Yes, you read that right. Boosting teacher pay by around $8,400 to $23,000 a year did virtually nothing to reduce the district’s teacher shortages.

It’s worse than that. Enrollment during the 2015-16 school year was around 320,000 students. Last week, Superintendent Jesus Jara said the district had 305,000 students. Assuming 25 students per teacher, the district needs around 600 fewer teacher today than it did six years ago.

This is the reason data is so important. Sometimes what appears to be a logical assumption doesn’t play out as expected. For instance, I assumed traffic fatalities would decrease in 2020 because people drove less. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s preliminary estimates show that traffic deaths spiked by 7.2 percent. That’s the largest increase since 2007. Clearly, there were other factors influencing the outcome.

It was logical to assume massive pay hikes would alleviate the district’s teacher shortage. It didn’t happen, which suggests the problem isn’t with compensation amounts. It could be that higher pay isn’t enough to persuade teachers to keep working in a dysfunctional district. It could be that teachers want a job with a health insurance plan that can pay its bills.

The delinking of pay and merit may turn off some teachers. Many teachers work much more than their contracted hours but receive the same pay as those who do only what they have to. Worse, teachers have a financial incentivize to do less in their classroom. That gives them more time to complete work under the Professional Growth System, which unlocks additional pay hikes.

Perhaps it’s not what the district pays that’s the problem but how that pay is distributed. Exploring something along those lines — despite union objections — would be more useful than shoveling more money into a broken system.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.

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