To the editor:
Every year I look at the salary scales for teachers in Lawrence. Every year I look at the salary scales for teachers in Shawnee Mission. All the Lawrence folks who grumble about spending money on education should take a look at the salary scales on these districts' Web sites. The disparity is large and does have a direct impact on recruiting and retaining the best teachers.
Such disparity also exists in professional baseball. The teams that offer the best salaries often have the best personnel. Bill James, a Lawrence resident, is the senior baseball operations adviser for the Boston Red Sox. He crunches numbers in an attempt to predict a player's value to the team. The Red Sox healthy spending has attracted great personnel and produced success. Statistics matter. Money matters. Look at the Royals. Look at the Red Sox. Salaries matter. Personnel matters.
Will Lawrence ever catch up? I commend the Lawrence district teachers for proposing a bold revamping of the salary scale. This is badly needed. Lawrence needs every dollar it can get now and in the future so that it can compete with neighboring districts. The excellent teachers in Lawrence must be compensated fairly for their experience and educational levels. When the school board considers use of the local option budget, it should not be a matter of restraint, but a matter of spending money wisely.
Mark Craig,
Lawrence
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Jamesaust (anonymous) says…
I disagree with such a "beggar-thy-neighbor" policy. It reminds me of some manner of "arms race."
The only significant reason JoCo has better salaries is that the State funding mechanism allows richer areas of Kansas funds to add to their base budget. Certainly, Lawrence could do the same, although I note that Lawrence has neither the economic activity nor property tax base to allow a painless supplement by comparison with JoCo. However, this does nothing for Kansas children not fortunate to live in "rich" areas.
The answer, as always, is to enforce equitable funding throughout Kansas. The particular genius of this is that if forces a balancing compromise within that area with the most people (JoCo), the most opposed to taxation in general (JoCo), the most wealth (JoCo), and the most incentive to see their kids get every advantage in life (JoCo). Kids in Kansas City and in Dodge City deserve the same opportunity and the only way to pay for this is to eliminate local "options."
(I should note that the political price for this probably would be to separate the author's "excellant" teachers from the average teachers, the neither excellant nor average teachers, and perhaps even those-who-must-be-fired teachers, and then to pay them accordingly -- just as exists in the world where all of those other taxpayers live.)