BY JOYCE BLAY
Staff Writer

JACKSON — There may be higher salaries in store for teachers who are in the middle years of their career after their union votes on a new contract sometime in November, according to Board of Education member Marvin Krakower.

Krakower, who was one of the board members who negotiated the new contract with teachers, spoke to the Tri-Town News on Oct. 31.

The new contract has not yet been voted on by the teachers union and no details of the deal have been made public.

“The board is concerned that from steps 2 to 11, we’re $5,000” lower than salaries offered for comparable positions in other districts, he said. “The board wants to put more money in the middle of the salary guide.”

Teachers can progress through a series of steps which determine their salary according to each employee’s level of education and professional experience.

Krakower said he believed there are 17 steps that determine the salaries of teachers and affiliated personnel who are members of the Jackson Education Association (JEA), the union which represents them.

Members of the JEA have been working under the terms of a contract that expired on June 30. Negotiators for the union and the board reached a tentative contract agreement in September with the help of a state-appointed mediator, according to JEA President Delores Harvey.

At the Oct. 25 Jackson State of the Schools education forum, in which student test results were presented under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the board listed as one of its goals the development of a plan to recruit, mentor and retain high quality teaching staff. In addition to holding a full-year new teacher orientation, the district will conduct exit interviews with teachers who resign their positions.

Both Krakower and Harvey agreed in separate interviews on Oct. 31 that the retention of good teachers is key to improving student test scores under NCLB, even if that means paying them more money.

“Over the last few years we lost some members to other districts with a higher pay differential,” Harvey said.

Harvey confirmed that one such district was Toms River, which offers teachers a higher salary once they reach the same salary steps in Jackson. While Harvey stressed that teachers did not always leave for financial reasons, she conceded that salary was still an important means of retaining teachers with the experience and skills needed to produce results under NCLB.

“We do very well with starting salaries, but not as well with mid-career,” Harvey said. “So salaries go down the longer people stay here.”

On Monday, school district spokeswoman Allison Erwin said she was unable to immediately provide the number of teachers who had resigned over the past year.

Harvey indicated that the figure may not be insignificant. She said that over a five-year period, as many as 100 teachers may have been hired as replacements for those leaving the district or as new employees to staff new schools that opened.

The Crawford-Rodriguez Elementary School opened in 2001 and the Elms Elementary School opened in 2003. In September 2006, the district will open Jackson Liberty High School.

Voters defeated a Sept. 27 referendum question requesting $32.5 million in funding for another elementary school. However, voters approved $11.7 million requested by the board to fund improvements at Jackson Memorial High School and the Christa McAuliffe Middle School.

Although both the JEA and the board agree that more money is needed to achieve federal and state academic goals, the remaining challenge to both sides is finding a formula for allocating funds so they produce the intended results.

“We agree to general raises, but we have to agree with where to put the money,” Krakower said.