Idaho teachers among nation’s lowest paid

BOISE – Idaho teachers are some of the lowest-paid in the nation, according to a report from a teachers union.

Idaho ranked 32nd in the nation for its annual teacher salaries, and 44th in the nation for starting teacher salaries, according to the American Federation of Teachers. Idaho was also one of 28 states where the increase in average teacher salary was lower than the national rate of inflation.

“Teachers are underpaid,” said John Davis, chairman of the University of Idaho’s College of Education in Moscow. “We lose people because salaries in teaching are not commensurate with comparable professions.”

Idaho teachers made starting salaries of just under $25,908 in the 2003-2004 school year, the year on which the AFT report was based. That amount hasn’t changed since then, though Idaho schools Superintendent Marilyn Howard proposed in September a budget that would raise teacher salaries for the first time in five years.

The national average in 2003-2004 for starting teacher salaries was $31,704.

Experienced teachers in Idaho had an average salary of $40,111 in that school year; the national average was $46,597.

Connecticut had the highest average teacher salary, at $56,516, while South Dakota had the lowest at $33,236, said the AFT, which represents school staff and government employees. The group said in a statement that Alaska’s beginning teacher salary was the highest, at $40,027, and Wisconsin’s was the lowest, at $23,952.

Howard proposed a $1 billion education budget for the fiscal year that begins in July. It includes $47.5 million for the payment that Idaho sends to school districts to pay for teacher and staff salaries and benefits – an increase of 5.2 percent over the current year’s spending.

The Legislature will vote on that spending plan next winter.

Education policy-makers in Idaho have long said that good teachers often leave to take jobs in neighboring states with higher pay.

“If your salary structure is sufficiently low overall, then what happens is you are a training ground for teachers who then leave,” said state Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow and a former chairman of the Senate Education Committee. “California and Las Vegas come up to Idaho recruiting.”

California’s average salary for experienced teachers is one of the highest in the country, at $56,444; Nevada’s is $43,211.

Davis, a former middle-school teacher in Utah, noted that the salaries cover a nine-month period, not a 12-month period, but added that they are still low compared to other professions, and the matter comes up frequently for discussion in his department.

“My students talk about it,” he said. “Would they like to earn more? Yes. But they want to be teachers. They know that it’s not high pay, and yet they’re here getting their degrees in it.”