Teachers union opposes bonuses for new recruits

By LAUREN RUSSELL
Community News Service
UM School of Journalism

HELENA – Although educators are pushing for millions of dollars in school money this session, several turned out Friday to oppose a bill that would provide $3 million in signing bonuses for beginning teachers in rural Montana.

Senate Bill 279, sponsored by Sen. Roy Brown, R-Billings (pictured), would give $10,000 individual signing bonuses to graduates of Montana university education programs who commit to working in rural areas for three years. For 300 qualifying teachers, the bonus would be paid out in increments over a three-year period: $4,000 the first year and $3,000 the subsequent two years. Money to pay for the bonuses would come from the state's general fund.

Brown said the bill, which would sunset in 2012, would help recruit and retain teachers who take better-paying out-of-state jobs for positions in rural communities, which are struggling to recruit good teachers.

“How long are we going to continue exporting our greatest resource—our kids?” Brown said. He said that by paying the bonus in stages, teachers would be encouraged to remain at a school for at least three years.

The bill makes good on a promise Brown made last fall when he campaigned against Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer. The governor is backing a competing bill that would raise salaries for Montana teachers by imposing a surtax on oil and natural gas production. Brown, who spent years working in the petroleum industry, has opposed that idea, saying it would discourage drilling and cost Montana jobs.

On Friday, opponents of Brown’s bill said that, while recruiting teachers to work in rural towns is a serious problem, his measure fails to address a root source of the state’s educational woes: below-average wages for all Montana teachers.

Eric Feaver, president of the Montana Educators Association/Montana Federation of Teachers, said that the bill would discriminate against currently employed teachers and, in some cases, raise the salary of a beginning teacher above that of an established teacher.

“If you want to see an interesting fight,” Feaver told the Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee, “you start talking about signing bonuses with teachers who are already on staff.”

Feaver said in an interview Thursday that the bill would not solve the problem of Montana teachers’ salaries, which are about $9,500 lower than the national average.

“We know that retaining teachers in our rural areas is a problem, but this bill will not fix this problem,” Feaver said.

Madalyn Quinlan, chief of staff for the Office of Public Instruction, said that the bill could place school districts in the position of having to hire teachers with little or no experience over teachers with more experience and education because the bonus would make the inexperienced teacher’s salary more affordable for the school.

Bruce Messenger, superintendent of Helena public schools, praised Brown’s intention but said that until a minimum starting salary of at least $30,000 is established for all teachers and until districts large and small receive better funding, signing bonuses will not effectively improve the quality of Montana’s public schools.

But Dave Puyear, executive director of the Montana Rural Education Association and the lone educator in support of the bill, said the bill is a good start to a decades-old problem and described his own background as a teacher who reluctantly took a one-year job in a small Hi-Line community.

“I had no intention whatsoever of staying more than a year, no intention whatsoever, and I ended up teaching there for ten years,” Puyear said. “That’s the power of this kind of recruitment potential, to be able to get somebody into that area and help them understand the community and the advantages that we can’t necessarily quantify.”

Other supporters of the bill were the Montana Taxpayers Association, the Associated Students of the University of Montana and the Associated Students of Montana State University. The committee took no immediate action on the bill.