Teacher salary and stipend data was released to DataCentral members on Dec. 1 and will be available to all members of HR Services through the HR Library on Dec. 16 (myTASB login required). DataCentral members will also have access to the results of the District Personnel Salary Survey on Dec. 16 (DataCentral login required). We want to thank all of you who took the time to participate! We ended up with 640 participants in the survey—38 more districts than last year—and that makes us very happy!
We will again offer the popular Staffing Controls for Public Schools workshop taught by our expert staffing consultant Richard Lane on Jan. 11 at the TASB building in Austin. Our first staffing workshop took place in November and reached full capacity with 75 attendees. If you want to attend in January, register now! This workshop is bound to fill up!
For those who need to brush up on compensation, we will offer two workshops: Fundamentals of Pay Systems and Controlling Complex Pay Systems. HR Services’ consultants will be the trainers on Jan. 19-20 at the TASB building in Austin.
Watch your email for an update to the HR Library focused on compensation and benefits in January. The update will include new information on pay systems; a glossary of terms; information and examples of ways to communicate total rewards; a summary of exemption tests under the Fair Labor Standards Act; and a summary of laws regulating compensation. The benefits update will include a summary of required and optional benefits; information about Social Security in public schools; COBRA (the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act); unemployment; and an updated sample letter of reasonable assurance.
TASB’s flagship publication, the Texas Lone Star 
, has two articles of interest to HR leaders written by our own Laura Bloemker, editor of HR Exchange. A feature article, “Tapping into Potential,” examines some dramatic improvements in school achievement that Texas districts are realizing through the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). In our quarterly HR Files section, you can read “The E&R Plan,” about a Colorado school district that has replaced the single teacher salary schedule with a performance-based pay and teacher development system—and no grandfathering.
To all our beloved members, we wish you a happy holiday season and richly deserved winter break. As usual, HR Exchange isn’t published in January but will be back in February. We hope to see everyone at the TASPA Winter Conference in Austin on Dec. 9-10. Stop by our exhibit table to say hello!
