Robert Enlow: School districts can afford to pay teachers more

Whatever happens before legislators reconvene in January to write the two-year state budget, it’s likely teacher salaries will be as hot a topic here as in other states.

We need to dig deep to understand why educators’ wages have fallen far short of their expectations over the past 20 years. The answer might surprise you.

Let’s start with a basic question: Do you know how much Indiana spends annually, on average, per student in its K-12 public schools?

If you said somewhere around $11,500—including federal, state and local funding—you’d be correct. Most of that money comes from the state, which spends almost half its budget to educate roughly 1 million Indiana students.

Now, if an average Indiana class has 20 students, that’s $230,000 in funding per classroom. According to the National Education Association, a beginning Indiana teacher makes around $35,000, and the average teacher salary in our state is around $54,000.

Which brings us to the question educators should be asking: Where the heck is the rest of that money going?

According to national data, per-student spending in Indiana increased 12 percent from 1994 to 2014, but teacher salaries decreased 13 percent, adjusting for inflation. We’re spending more, but teachers haven’t seen that reflected in their paychecks.

They have every right to be upset, but the culprits in this sleight-of-hand are not state lawmakers or programs that make it easier for students to access different schooling types. The folks pinching teachers’ pennies are those in charge at the district level who’ve chosen to hire non-teachers and administrators at a much higher rate than teachers.

Instead of adding teachers at the same rate as student growth—9 percent—over the 1994-2014 time period, Hoosier schools increased teaching staff just 4 percent. The rest of the money went to non-teaching staff, a category that grew 53 percent and includes administrators, social workers, counselors, janitors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and curriculum specialists.

Had districts kept their non-teacher hiring in line with student growth—and invested the rest in their teachers—Hoosier educators could be making around $25,000 more per year.

The bottom line: School districts have more money to spend than most people think. They simply choose not to spend it on teachers. And that should infuriate not just those working in the classroom, but also families who are continually told that, unless they pay more in taxes, teachers will be fired or classroom ratios will rise.

If we all agree that teachers should make more, school boards and district leaders must make them a priority. In some communities, that might mean closing old buildings, consolidating services and eliminating duplicative administrative positions that often pay more than $100,000 a year.

It also means having an honest conversation about health and pension benefits, which have been draining resources from districts for decades while creating a disincentive for younger teachers to stay in the classroom.

As the legislative session approaches, we need to have an honest conversation about K-12 funding and why recent increases haven’t reached the folks on the front lines. They don’t have to march on the Statehouse to understand who’s been short-changing them all these years.•

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Enlow is president and CEO of EdChoice, a national K-12 organization.