Governor Parson's 2020 "State of the State"
Photo courtesy of the Office of Missouri Governor Mike Parson
State of the State 2020
By: Amy Shelton
On Wednesday, January 15th, Missouri Governor Mike Parson delivered his second “State of the State” address and released his budget proposal for FY2021. In his address he highlighted successes of the past year in the areas of workforce development and job creation, infrastructure investment, government reform, and public safety. He then turned his attention to education. The Governor mentioned teacher pay in his speech but did not include a teacher pay increase in his proposed budget, thus leaving open the question of whether a teacher pay raise is a priority this legislative session.
Is This Unique to Missouri?
Across the nation, at least seven Republican governors and several Democratic governors have included teacher pay raises in their 2020 priorities, including the governors of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Virginia. Governors across the country seem to be responding to burgeoning public support for teachers and teacher pay increases. Yet some of these proposals have been criticized as overly vague. The governor of Florida proposed a substantial increase to the minimum teacher salary but left a lot of questions unanswered. The governor of Indiana suggested that a teacher pay raise is a priority but has been criticized for failing to push for a pay raise this year.
Something similar seems to be happening in Missouri. Midway through his remarks on education, Governor Parson stated, “Many of these changes to our workforce system would not be possible without our teachers…and that is why I also want to start discussing ways to improve teacher pay.” After pausing for several seconds of applause, he continued. “However, the solution cannot just be asking the state to write a bigger check. We are going to ask school districts, school boards, and DESE to propose a better plan for our teachers.”
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) proposed a teacher pay raise plan to the State Board of Education in early December. The plan includes a $4,000 pay raise for all teachers, a minimum salary increase from $25,000 to $32,000, and additional funding to recruit teachers for hard-to-fill positions. Any mention of these initiatives was noticeably absent from the governor’s budget.
The Governor’s proposed budget did include the following line items for education:
$12 million (increase) - early childhood special education
$10 million (increase) - fully fund the education formula
$10 million (increase) - school transportation (though still underfunded by $150M)
$4.8 million - A+ Scholarship program
$500,000 - Bright Flight Academic Scholarship
So Is a Pay Raise Possible?
The House and Senate can include a teacher pay raise in their own versions of the budget, but it is unclear at this time if they intend to do so. Senate Appropriations Chairman Dan Hegeman, R-Cosby, pointed out that Governor Parson’s budget included a $10 million increase in general education funding and an additional $10 million for transportation, so districts could choose to use funding freed up by those increases to raise salaries. “If we give them more money to run buses, that would give them discretion to be able to adjust the salaries, and I think that’s where many of us would hope that they would put that,” Hegeman told the Columbia Tribune.
House Bill 1990, filed by Rep. Brenda Shields, R-St. Joseph would raise the state minimum salary $1,000 a year over seven years to reach $32,000. There are over 70,000 public school teachers in Missouri, and 2,300 currently earn less than $32,000 a year. The average starting salary in the state is $32,465. But districts that currently start teachers below $32,000, including half of the districts in southwest Missouri, wonder where the funding for a higher minimum salary will come from if not from the state. Superintendents Tammy Erwin of Humansville and Mike Wallace of Everton expressed concern that an unfunded teacher pay raise would require them to cut teacher positions and thus increase class sizes.
Paul Katnik, assistant commissioner in DESE’s Office of Educator Quality, affirmed that the thinking behind DESE’s proposal was that the additional funding would come from the state and that the burden would not fall on districts.
Conclusion
Nationwide, support for public school teachers and teacher pay raises has increased in recent years. Missouri is one of the states in which teacher recruitment and retention remains a persistent challenge, and low pay was cited in a recent survey as one of the top reasons that Missouri teachers quit. Increasing teacher pay to make it more competitive in the region is likely an important step in ensuring that Missouri students have access to a high-quality education.
You can view the full transcript of Governor Parson’s “State of the State” here.