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Feature Volume 16, Issue 5
At All Costs
Elective teachers discuss discrepancy in stipends compensations Eliana Grant | Reporter In regards to teachers and their wages, many may not consider the balances and effects that go into setting up proper livable wages for public school teachers all across PFISD, and how it may work with school budgeting. One particular thing many school districts provide are stipends, an extra amount of money given to teachers in certain positions that provide extra work or specific education in their class. “It’s my 24th year teaching, and I think the big thing is that my stipends really haven’t changed is probably an accurate statement,” theater teacher Michael Fisher said. “Even though my salary has gone up with the rate of inflation,
the stipend hasn’t really adjusted.” While stipends may have not gone down for Fisher, there are a range of different stipends, all with varying degrees of extra money. The primary ones are academic, athletic, performing arts, degree/ position, academic extra duty, and supplemental stipends. If these would be given to various teachers in specific jobs such as coaches, special education teachers, or language teachers. “I think that the idea of stipends is that you’re supposed to be creating incentives for doing extra duties,” Fisher said. “It seems to be challenging to attract people to be, for example, the class sponsor, [because] that stipend tends to be lower than other
things There’s a global undervaluing of particular extra duties, then the district will kind of echo that.” Over the last few years, stipends have remained relatively stable and consistent throughout the various departments in the district. Nevertheless, many teachers are still lacking in proper compensation for after school or extra work centered around their job. “The art department does not have a stipend associated for any of their outside work,” technical theater teacher Nicole Malone said “A lot of our art departments are really active in the community, they’re also really active with VASE, which is their scholastic [project]. So all of that is
extra time and extra duties and they are currently not compensated for those.” It may be effective to consider how school budgeting affects or may affect how much money is put into a stipend, or in what particular department the money will be focused on. “No stipends have decreased for any teachers in [the district]. In fact, many stipends have increased during the last several years,” the district’s Chief Human Resources Officer Willie Watson said. “The district does have challenges with funding because state provided funds haven’t increased to match inflation. If the district receives increased state funds, the district could consider further increasing stipends.”
Teachers weigh options for fixing school-wide funding shortage Kaitlyn Nash | Co-Editor It is evident that there are budget issues plaguing PfISD. One proposed solution to these problems is eliminating the second planning period for high school electives (math, science, English, and social studies would keep their period), according to a recent email from Superintendent Doug Killian. “The district is looking into ways to save money to repair the funding deficit for the upcoming school year,” principal Michael Grebb said. Worries from elective teachers have been spreading following this email, especially because teacher shortages
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have already spread resources thin. “I only have one [planning period] right now but it’s because we’ve had so many kids in the agricultural [AG] program that we had to take on another period,” AG teacher Pilar Gonzalez-Munoz said. “We have four AG teachers and out of the four, three of us have an extra [class] so three of us only have one conference right now.” Though planning periods may be taken away for some teachers, those who lose them usually get something in return. “We have some teachers that are compensated to give up a PLC [Professional Learning Community] or planning period,” Grebb said. “We would work in plans to help them prepare better before and during the school year.” However, sometimes a boost in pay isn’t enough for teachers who trade off personal time for more work. “Time is money, money is time,” Gon zalez-Mu noz
said. “I still do work at home even when I don’t try to so I never feel like it’ll ever be enough for as many hours as we put in. I do love my job and I do love my students but I just wish I had a little bit more to really hit that sweet spot.” Not only that, but many elective teachers have multiple clubs and organizations they have to run outside of their normal preps. “I know personally I would not be able [to adapt] because I’m the UIL coordinator, I’m in charge of speech and debate and I have two [classes] that are AP [classes],” AP teacher and speech and debate coach Kirsten Nash said. “A lot of your elective teachers are the only teacher that’s teaching it so we don’t have somebody to share creating assignments or coming up with assessments. We’re doing it all by ourselves. I think it would be hardly fair for those people who already have a lot of preps and other responsibilities.” Both Nash and Gonzalez-Munoz stay late multiple nights of the week because of the extra responsibilities they carry. “I try to do as much as I can for grading [and] planning for the following week but again, it gets very difficult when
it’s six preps,” Gonzalez-Munoz said. “I’m also over [with] FFA as well so we try to plan all of our FFA stuff, get paperwork turned in, [and] make deposits for the program. On top of that, I’m the class sponsor so I have to put that in there as well. Right now, it’s just one conference period so sometimes I stay really late, like 7 p.m. or later depending on what I have to get done or I come early to just get caught up on things.” One main problem that has been singled out is the fact that only extracurricular activity teachers were targeted by the discussed elimination of prep periods. “I know that the core stuff is important, obviously because I teach English and history, but the easiest way to kill [a] kid’s love of school is to kill all of the extracurriculars,” Nash said. “I’m not saying academics don’t matter but you can’t make the assumption that academics are the only thing that matter and everything else is open for cutting. I think that [it] would be really unfair to assume that just because you teach an elective class that you don’t have a lot of work.”
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