Arizona bill to raise teachers' pay by $10K passes first hurdle

PHOENIX — A freshman Republican lawmaker — who helped shepherd former Gov. Doug Ducey’s effort to raise teacher pay to end a 2018 teacher strike — is working to boost educator salaries by another $10,000 a year.

And the measure cleared its first hurdle Monday with a 10-5 vote of the House Appropriations Committee — with most Democrats opposed for a variety of reasons.

Arizona teachers remain among the lowest-paid in the nation despite the 20% raise they won after the statewide strike, said Rep. Matt Gress. He said he wants to make Arizona a mecca for teachers by boosting pay well above the national average.

“This would potentially move us into the Top 10 when we get the new rate base,” Gress told Capitol Media Services on Monday.

“The goal here is, in other states there’s going to be a billboard saying, ‘Come to Arizona, the starting teacher pay is X’ versus other states coming to Arizona and poaching our teachers,” he continued. “We really need to take bold action on getting the money to the teachers.”

Gress’ proposal is one of two being considered by the House Appropriations Committee that are designed to boost teacher retention and get more people to come to Arizona to teach in public schools.

The other is a Democrat’s bill subsidizing family health insurance for teachers and staff who work in public school districts and charter schools. It got approved by the panel, with hesitancy from some Republicans.

Price tag will make final passage difficult

Gress’ teacher pay raise bill, however, faces a tough go in the Legislature because of its price tag.

The overall cost of his plan to give teachers a nearly 20% raise by 2025 is nearly $700 million a year, a big chunk of this year’s anticipated $1.8 billion budget surplus.

And that surplus is expected to go to nearly zero by the time the plan would be fully implemented, meaning its chances are iffy at best.

Potentially more problematic is that $700 million would have to be provided by lawmakers each and every year into the future or the extra pay would disappear.

Gress, however, remains optimistic. He noted that state revenues this year continue to grow beyond projections.

But it turned out that it wasn't Republicans worried about finances who opposed the measure.

One concern was that while the state would fund teacher salaries, districts would be stuck with the associated costs like retirements and benefits. Then there's the fact that other school workers, such as librarians, social workers and support staff, were left out.

Also, Rep. Judy Schweibert, D-Phoenix, said none of this addresses the expenditure cap on education dollars, something lawmakers can — but don't have to — raise every year. The additional money, she said, would leave schools "in a very precarious position where they're just at the mercy even more so than they are now" of the Legislature every year.

Monday's vote came over the objections of most of the Democrats on the panel.

Rep. Athena Salman, D-Tempe, pointed out Gress crafted the measure so the dollars would flow only if lawmakers approve a parallel measure to increase information that would be available to the public on a "school transparency portal.'' But with that measure sidelined so far, Salman called the vote on Gress' bill "half-baked legislation'' and "an exercise in political theater.''

Gress called the vote "bizarro world.''

"Republicans are voting in favor of getting more money into the classrooms and raising teacher pay and holding schools accountable, and Democrats aren't,'' he said.

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Would address across-the-board pay

School districts across the state have struggled in recent years to fill classroom teaching posts, with surveys by the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association showing more than 2,500 vacancies just a month into the current school year.

That means nearly 7,600 teaching jobs either vacant or filled with uncertified teachers. The state Education Department says there are about 60,000 teachers in public K-12 district and charter schools.

One of the biggest factors in hiring and retaining teachers is low teacher pay in the state, which ranked 44th nationally, according to the most recent survey by the National Education Association, the national teachers' union. That’s up from nearly dead last in 2018, when tens of thousands of K-12 teachers went on strike and forced the GOP-controlled Legislature and Ducey to enact a 20% pay raise.

Gress' measure, HB2800, is crafted to address not just starting pay but across-the-board pay.

On one hand, he acknowledged, 40% of the education workforce is in years one through five of working in the profession. “And that’s where you see most of the churn to begin with,” Gress said.

But he said boosting pay only for new teachers and not for those who are more experienced “could create significant workforce issues for schools.”

The measure also specifies that low-performing teachers would not qualify. Also, teachers would have to spend half their time in the classroom to qualify.

But he said it is one thing that could help.

“What I really believe this bill represents is advancing an issue that all Republicans, I believe, agree with, and I think Democrats do, as well, that teachers need to be paid more,” Gress said.

Gress, who represents a Phoenix district and was Ducey’s budget director from 2017 until the former governor left office this year, said he is hopeful he can get it passed.

Family health insurance proposal

The health insurance proposal that won committee approval Monday, HB2737, would subsidize up to 90% of the cost for teachers and support staff to add their dependents to their health insurance coverage.

Teachers now pay less than $100 a month for their own health insurance coverage, but adding family coverage can bring the cost to $1,000 a month, said bill sponsor Rep. Amish Shaw.

That drives younger teachers from the profession as they start families and are hit with the cost of insuring them, said Shaw, a Democrat who represents a Phoenix-area district.

“A lot of what happens is that the teachers are leaving, and other professionals are leaving, because of the cost of health insurance,” Shaw said. “The intent is to retain a good employee who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get their kid or dependents covered.”

The proposal was met with some resistance from Republicans on the committee. Those included Gress, who said he believes teachers should instead be added to the state insurance pool to save money.

“I’m all for helping defray the cost of fringe benefits,” Gress said. “I am not convinced this bill is the right solution to it, because we’re just going to be subsidizing all of these contracts that (school districts) have with various insurance companies. And I don’t think that they’re getting the best price given the economy of scale.”

Shaw’s proposal would appropriate $10 million for the insurance subsidy, which would provide up to $6,000 a year and apply only to teachers and staff who earn less than $75,000 per year. With average teacher salaries at $52,157 last year, virtually all teachers would qualify.