Better Pay for West Virginia Teachers

The following blog entry is a response to a prompt from aBetterWestVirginia.com, which asked bloggers in the state to "identify an obstacle that hinders West Virginia and discuss its solution." This opportunity was offered by aBetterWestVirginia.com as a way to celebrate West Virginia Day, which is a day remembering the birth of West Virginia's statehood: June 20th, 1863.

By Jeff Webb
West Virginia needs good teachers. With many young teachers opting to leave the state for better paying jobs and many experienced teachers approaching retirement age, the West Virginia educational system has positions to fill, and the state needs to offer some incentive—some enticement—to get educators to stay in the state.

Perhaps the solution is offering higher salaries for teachers. Over the past several years, with an average salary somewhere around $43,000, West Virginia has consistently ranked low in national rankings of teacher pay, while bordering states of Virginia and Ohio have consistently been ranked near or in the top ten highest-paying states for teachers. It is little surprise, then, that young teachers, fresh out of college and looking to start a life, migrate to these nearby states for more lucrative job opportunities.

There are some problems, though, when it comes to raising teacher salaries in West Virginia, namely that the state isn’t a very rich state to begin with, and the current economic recession in the United States can’t help matters, either. According to one recent survey from the U.S. Census Bureau, the median family income in West Virginia is somewhere around $44,000, and, in this respect, the average teacher pay is not far off from what most other West Virginians are earning.

However, using this excuse—that teachers do not need more money because they are right at the average income for the state—is frivolous, as the basic problem still exists: other states offer better pay, and, as a result, West Virginia is losing teachers.

The state’s two largest teacher unions, AFT and WVEA, have each offered their own ideas for pay raises, but there are flaws in their ideas. Namely, in the pay raise plans of both unions, not only do teachers receive a raise, but so, too, do superintendents. With the average salary for superintendents around $90,000—and the salary being even higher in some counties, such as Kanawha—there doesn’t seem much use in the superintendents receiving raises. Rather, it would be much more beneficial to the state and its educational system if the raise were only given to the people that need it: teachers.

Currently, the West Virginia legislature sets the minimum pay for teachers, and then individual counties, based on population and taxable income, can pay more than the minimum. Perhaps, then, what the legislature needs to do is raise the minimum salary by a couple thousand dollars in order to bring West Virginia up to par with other states. If financing for this is hard to come by, perhaps some superintendents and other government officials might consider a pay cut.

Humility. That is the simple answer to this problem. Nobody becomes a teacher for the money. A person becomes a teacher to help others, and that person will do the job no matter what the pay. It’s just that, in the current society, money is necessary to living, and wanting to receive more money for a job whenever possible is not a difficult motive to grasp.

However, it will take humility for West Virginia teachers to accept what they need, not what they want. Likewise, it will take the humility of government leaders to cut back on excess, to give more money to those that need it and not, perhaps, to those that don’t.

Receiving a proper education is one of, if not the most, important things in a person’s life. Paying West Virginia teachers a better salary makes the profession both more respectable and appealing, and that, right now, is exactly what the state’s educational system needs.