Q. How do we freeze teacher salaries if we have no money for step increases?
A. There are two relevant legal issues you must consider. The first is that you cannot pay teachers any less than their salary step entitlement on the state minimum salary schedule. Teachers advance one step for every year of service so you must pay a salary equal to or greater than the salary step that the teacher will be entitled to in 2009–10. If you do not pay a sufficient amount above state minimum to meet this threshold, then you must give a salary increase that will be sufficient to bring teacher salaries to their minimum step entitlement for an additional year of service.
The second issue relates to your obligations under the terms of your teacher contracts. Teachers have a right to know what their salary will be before the deadline to resign their contract without a penalty. If you cannot give a pay increase or even suspect that you may not be able to give a pay increase, you should provide notice to your teachers that their salary will remain the same for the 2009–10 school year no later than 45 days before the first day of instruction on your school calendar.
Aside from these two legal issues, be sure to adjust the years of experience on your local salary schedule to reflect that salaries will be the same as the prior year for an additional year of service. For example, if a 10-year teacher earned $50,000 in 2008–09 and salaries were frozen, then an 11-year teacher would be earning $50,000 in 2009–10. Accurate alignment between years of service and salaries is important to ensure that new hires are not brought in above existing teachers with the same experience.
