Antigo School Board votes to raise teacher salaries

ANTIGO — At a meeting Monday night, the Antigo School Board voted to increase the salaries of teachers at the top end of its pay scale by $1,000 per year, as well as to provide a 50 cent hourly raise to all support staff.

Director of Business Services Kelly Fassbender said the motion was forwarded to the board to ensure the salaries of the district’s most experienced teachers did not remain frozen and maintained competitiveness with those in other districts.

“These people would have been frozen, just like our support staff would have been frozen at two years, five years, ten years, fifteen years, and twenty years,” Fassbender said. “We wanted to make sure that everyone got a salary increase and that not one area was favored more than the other.”

As in most public school districts, Antigo School District teachers are compensated according to a schedule weighing variables such as professional development, degrees, and, perhaps most heavily, years of experience.

Antigo’s schedule consists of eight lanes, each of which contains three steps. Teachers currently on the third step of the eighth lane — in other words, teachers that have reached the hypothetical salary limit — are scheduled to receive $75,400 per year.

In the public comment portion of the meeting, high school science teacher Pete Lewandowski, who said he was speaking on behalf of a small group of district teachers “who have been loyal to this district for the longest,” suggested that a ninth lane should be added to the schedule.

“You are proposing that those of us currently frozen at the top of lane eight — because you have not added another lane — should receive approximately 40 percent of what they would receive at the top of any other lane instead of adding a ninth lane and being equitable,” Lewandowski said. “For example, a teacher who was hired three years ago at the very bottom of the salary schedule, most likely fresh out of college with no experience or perhaps lack of a license, would receive two and a half times the raise that you’re offering me after 34 years. That does not come across to me as equitable or appreciation for the years of commitment to my profession or this community.”

Fassbender, though, said the recommendation to increase the salaries of teachers at the top of the pay scale had been made following research of the compensation schedules of area school districts, at which those top earners’ salaries were either increased by $1,000, $500, or not at all.

“A first year teacher’s salary increases by $750, and then, according to the salary schedule, teachers beyond the last step would not get an increase,” she said. “But instead of freezing any staff member’s salary, we chose to give $1,000 to remain competitive and equitable according to what teachers were getting in our district and area districts.”

“These staff members at the end or beyond the salary scale received a significant raise compared to the teachers who were 15 years and below, because the past year, the board allowed them to move two spots in one year in addition to the $1,200 raise that they received, which was about $4,700 in one year. All teachers are getting a salary increase — they will get $750 in year one and two and then $2,500 or $1000 depending on if they move a step or a lane.”

She also noted the district’s relatively large contributions to individual employee health care deductibles, despite the district’s health care provider raising prices 12.5 percent in just the past year.

“The district’s share in Antigo is $5,550 [per employee]. The state average is $590,” Fassbender said. “So the district is significantly paying higher to shield our employees from rising costs. Then lastly…you’ll see how our family plans compare with the state average. Looking at the employer share of the deductible, you’ll see that…our school district pays $11,000, and the employer as the average in our state is $1,178.”

Though the board voted 8-1 for the $1,000 increase, several of its members, including Angela Schreiber, expressed sympathy with the concerns of teachers at the high end of the district’s pay scale.

“I can also see the perspective of teachers that…retirement’s coming,” Schreiber said. “They’re looking forward to that…If they have some minor issues with their health or whatever, I can see the point of… [wanting] to maximize my salary. ‘I’ll pay more for my insurance because I don’t plan on using as much.’ So I would want to maximize my salary so that it impacts my retirement as best as I could possibly get that set up for.”

Board member Scot Peterson voiced similar sentiments.

“I think if you want to retain these guys, their last three years impact retirement quite a bit,” he said. “So that’s a huge consideration for these guys. So we really want to retain them…we have to think hard about that.”

District Administrator Glenda Oginski said next year, Fassbender will collaborate with a committee of teachers and staff members to develop an updated teacher compensation plan, one that addresses what some others in the district presumably feel is one of its shortcomings.

“Particularly at the low end of the scale, we are not competitive,” Oginski said. “We are not comparable to our surrounding districts, which means we are not going to be attracting the lesser-experienced teachers as our veteran staff move into retirement. They’re all important, and we want to retain all of them, because you just can’t buy a veteran teacher and all of their knowledge. It’s important to us to do that. But there is more work than just adding a lane or there’s more of it that needs to go into it, and it’s a year-long worth of work to happen.”