Missouri lawmakers discusses teacher pay increase

QUINCY (WGEM) – Some Missouri lawmakers want to raise the baseline salary for teachers.

State officials said it is a priority of theirs to raise the minimum teacher salary from $38,000 to $40,000.

Jason Harper, superintendent of the Palmyra R-1 School District, said they have managed to fill all their teaching positions in his district through an intense recruiting effort.

He said the district’s starting salary for teachers is $39,000, above the current minimum, which helped attract teachers. He said raising the base salary would be a good way to help school districts, especially in rural districts.

“To me, it levels the playing field for everybody because most school districts are gonna be around, well currently, around that 38,000 mark. So our goal was to be above that here at Palmyra R-1. And so now if they raise that to 40,000, I think that just puts more school districts on a level playing field for beginning teachers,” Harper said.

He said it is a good step, but more needs to be done to bring more teachers into the education field, especially for math and science. He said those teaching positions are difficult to fill, especially for rural school districts.

Harper said it is also important to get people into the educational field, he said he remembers when they would have 20 people apply for a job, but now they sometimes get one or two.

He said a change in the base pay could compress teachers’ salary schedules, in which pay is raised based on experience, called steps. It means veteran teachers making $40,000, would get paid the same as new teachers and it changes how long those teachers have to work to get the raise.

State Representative Louis Riggs said teacher pay is an issue in the state and he introduced a bill to help with teacher pay.

Riggs said he wants to ensure those schools can have the funds to raise those salaries by freeing up money to provide each school district with the money to raise teachers’ salaries.

“We can free up to a million dollars from general revenue from the state for teacher salaries only. Not administrators, not programs, people. The provision is you need to match that with money from your own reserves,” Riggs said.

He said this is meant to prevent schools from exhausting their reserves to attract teachers. He said this can help attract teachers, especially to rural school districts.

He said it is still important the state works to encourage more people to get into teaching to help fill open teaching spots.

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