EDITORIAL: Baker School Board shows how much it values teachers

Published 12:30 pm Wednesday, February 22, 2023

The Baker School Board has made an immense commitment to the 125 or so teachers in local schools. And a considerable commitment of the district’s budget.

The board last week approved an unprecedented increase in salaries for teachers. The starting salary, beginning July 1, will rise by nearly 56% — from $38,349 to $60,000.

All teachers will receive a raise. The highest salary, for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree plus 90 additional hours of college credit, or a master’s degree plus 45 hours, increases from $72,959 to $86,521, a jump of almost 19%.

The new salary schedule will boost the district’s personnel costs by $2.3 million for the first year.

The district has sufficient reserves to afford that increase without cutting other programs, based on its budget.

Erin Lair, a BHS graduate who has been the district’s superintendent since last July 1, said the district’s projected ending fund balance, when the fiscal year concludes June 30, will be about $12 million. That’s about 20% of the total budget, at least twice what Lair said financial experts consider prudent.

Lair also acknowledged that the sheer scale of the pay raises — annual increases typically are 5% or less — will garner the attention of district residents.

She, along with board chair Julie Huntington and board member Andrew Bryan, justified the new salary schedule in part by arguing that the much more generous pay will both help retain current teachers and attract top-notch newcomers, both of which, the district officials said, have been a challenge.

The district certainly ought to be able to make a strong pitch to prospective teachers, using the salary schedule as its chief exhibit.

Relatively few jobs, and not just in rural Oregon, pay new employees $60,000.

That’s well above the average salary in Baker County, which is less than $40,000.

The school board’s decision should give the district a meaningful advantage as it seeks to put the best teachers in our classrooms, and to keep them there.

“This is an investment as much, or more, about the retention of the amazing teaching staff we have in Baker as it is about recruiting new teachers to Baker,” Lair said. “We expect this investment to have big returns for not just our teachers directly, but for the district as a whole, for our students and families, for our local economy.”

Undoubtedly some people will conclude that the school district could spend its money more wisely.

But Lair’s contention — that having the most highly qualified teachers possible is vital to giving Baker students the best possible education — is persuasive.

Teachers have a crucial job. The best teachers do more than impart knowledge — they can positively influence the rest of their students’ lives, helping them to become happy adults who contribute to society.

Teachers deserve to be fairly compensated.

And in the Baker School District, there is no longer any legitimate argument that they won’t be.