FORT STOCKTON Potentially paying up to $75,000 per year to teachers with no experience, Fort Stockton ISD is doing things a new way and loving it.
With 2,200 students and 180 teachers on six campuses, the district is rewarding and heavily incentivizing teachers in the disciplines of English, mathematics and science. The district has nearly 400 employees total. It also provides teacher housing.
For the second year running with a budget just under $40 million and zero deficit spending, Superintendent Gabriel Zamora said, Fort Stockton has five salary scales. They then developed the Zone where there are six zones of pay.
Zamora said they broke them into zones because they are frontloading pay and those $75,000 a year teachers will be making the same amount for a few years. The regular Fort Stockton ISD salary scale for a zero-year certified teacher starts at $55,000.
Zamora explained that the top salary gives teachers who had moved into non-STAAR tested areas and grades the incentive to go back to core subject areas.
The system is also aimed at encouraging teachers who don’t have their certifications to get them and teach in tested areas like English, math and science, which are what the state evaluates districts on.
English and math go from third grade through high school. Fifth and eighth grade biology counts in science and eighth grade history and U.S. history in high school.
Those that make $75,000 must be fully certified in the areas the district has identified as Zone eligible and accepted additional responsibilities that come with the privilege being Zone, Zamora said.
“When a campus or a district doesn’t do well, who gets the heat?” Zamora asked. “Those specific teachers and they’re getting paid in most cases the same as the art teacher, the PE teacher, the teacher who’s teaching social studies in a non-testable subject grade and an elementary teacher who’s in second grade and below and doesn’t have the stress or consequences of having to deal with underperforming at the end of the year.
“So what did our people and people throughout the state do? They moved away from those subject areas. They requested transfers to get out of third grade and be placed in second and first grade.
“Teachers move away from the most difficult subjects because it’s an annual pay raise. Typically you transfer during the summer.”
Zamora said Fort Stockton is using the same money that’s available to most districts but is distributing it to the most important areas.
“When we did that last year, we had the highest number of transfer requests in the district’s history because when we explained it to our staff how it was that someone could earn $72,500 starting or even higher if they’d been with the district longer, they now had a reason to go back into the fire into the more difficult subject areas,” he said.
“Many of our teachers who were already certified in them had found ways to wiggle away into the easier areas,” Zamora said.
Zamora said every school district in Texas and eventually the country will have to adopt some form of his system.
“We kept it pretty hush-hush last year as we developed the concept and approved it,” he said. “Last year the number was $72,500. Now it’s up to $75,000 for a zero-year teacher, potentially.”
Zamora said it gives a big advantage to Fort Stockton, a city of 8,500 people 83 miles south-southwest of Odessa.
“You know, being from Odessa, that it’s difficult recruiting teachers out to West Texas,” he said. “Throughout the state and states, it has become a real issue.”
Last year when Fort Worth ISD announced a $65,000 starting salary for teachers, Zamora said, “They just killed themselves because there’s a rule that says that once salary is moved up, you can’t move it back down without the district being in some sort of financial crisis or exigency.”
“The Zone, the highest of our five pay systems, is the one where a zero-year teacher can start at $75,000,” Zamora said.
“There are a whole lot of them here who are not certified but are working toward certification and will then join the higher of the two pay systems,” the superintendent said.
“We grandfathered some (non-certified) people in when I arrived in Fort Stockton two years ago and the starting salary was $47,000. With the new system that we put into place, I let everybody know we would never give another raise to somebody who wasn’t certified and thus we created the different salary scales.”
New hires who are not certified would be making $40,000 with the district holding $7,000 back. If the educator makes adequate progress, or earns certification sometime during the year, they get the $7,000.
“My intent behind that is that these people who were already here were … making $47,000, or $47,500 or $48,000 because they’d been in the district for numerous years, so I wouldn’t want to take something that they’ve already been getting away because they might be stretching every last dollar already. That’s why we grandfathered the non-certified teachers that were in district into the old salary scale. But new (non-certified) employees that come in, we hold that money back not to hurt them but hey look you’re coming in this is what the deal is you got these extra 7Gs but you’ve got to show that you’re working toward getting certified. We’re essentially giving them two years to do it. … If they become certified then they make more money because they get prorated based on the number of days they have left on to the next highest salary scale. It isn’t to punish them or hurt them. It’s to give them a financial incentive and a reason to get certified,” Zamora said.
Zamora added too many teachers were not certified and too many had been “just floating for many years” because there was no incentive and no penalty “other than getting rid of them when we needed them, so they were getting paid the same as a certified teacher.”
He said the district will listen to reasons why a teacher may not have gotten certified in the roughly two-year time period, but “if it comes down to you just didn’t do what you were supposed to do, then you’re back to the 40 and maybe we do need you because, as you know, teachers are in short supply right now.”
But if they are willing to work for $40,000, Zamora said that means it helps fund the higher paid teachers.
He will be in Austin July 28 presenting at an executive academy for James Guerra, who is one of the biggest search consultants in the state and nation, primarily for superintendents.
“I’m going to teach this and a bunch of other things to about 30 high-level administrators,” Zamora said. “I’m not just in this game to try to make things better for Fort Stockton. I’m in it to make things better for everybody and we’ve now reached a point where we need to share what we’re doing.”
Zamora said Fort Stockton High School just had the highest passing rate in the district’s history, outperforming Texas in every area but U.S. history, where 93 percent passed with the state’s average being 95.
“Some of that had to do with our pay systems,” he said. “These are big accomplishments and I want other people to understand what we’re doing because the faster other districts get on board with implementing some model similar or one modified to their specific needs, the faster people who left education will get back into the game and the quicker our kids who go to college and want to be teachers will understand that.
“Get something that actually means something. Get you a math certificate or a degree in English so you can start at $75,000 with Fort Stockton.”
He added that it helps the district know what teachers are going to cost and it helps with teacher retirement.
“The higher the salaries are for Fort Stockton teachers, the more they’ll get in retirement. Because it’s the TRS (Teacher Retirement System) itself that’s funding them that’s money that will forever stay in Fort Stockton while those people are here. As they retire, they’ll have more money to spend in the community,” Zamora said.
Even if you’re not in the Zone scale, he said, you can request your final three or five years to be placed on Zone. The rule is you have to have put in 20 years in Fort Stockton to do that.
“If you gave your life to the district … then we will pay you back for those last three or five years before you retire so that you, too, can benefit from getting that higher salary for the remainder of your life. It’s kind of a last little thank you for your service that we put in place,” Zamora said.
