What should we be doing in UCF to attract, retain, and reward Great Teachers?  I started this series several months ago, and put it on hold during the recent contract negotiations.  I will now be continuing the topic, so a recap is in order. Continue reading →

At the July board meeting I voted to approve Cliff Beaver as the new principal at Pocopson Elementary.   And as with all appointments, the board also approves a salary, which is set and recommended by the administration.

For all compensation matters that come before the board, I always want to understand how a proposed pay package compares to the market for similar positions in Chester County as well as Pennsylvania overall.   If we are going to attract, retain, and reward great principals (and teachers, support staff, and other administrators) , our compensation needs to be competitive.

So how does pay for our elementary school principals compare?  Here is what I found, using the public database of school salaries. Continue reading →

Retirement plans are an important part of total compensation for UCF teachers.  In today’s post we will look at the pension benefit teachers can earn during the career.  For certain teachers, it can be a huge wealth creator.   Continue reading →

Retirement plans are an important part of total compensation for UCF teachers.  In today’s post we will look at the pension benefit teachers can earn their career.  Continue reading →

UCF’s employee benefit programs are an important part of total compensation.  And if we want to attract, retain, and reward Great Teachers, we need competitive benefit plans.   In my most recent posts I have evaluated the ‘richness’ of teacher benefits on three dimensions;

• Access to benefits.  What benefits are offered to UCF teachers?  (see part 1)
• Quality of benefits.  How complete and full is the coverage of each benefit? (see part 2)
• Cost.   How valuable is the benefit, and how much of a contribution do UCF teachers make to pay for each benefit. (see part 3)

In each evaluation, I presented benchmarks for comparison, and I rated the relative position of UCF benefits against the market.  Evaluating quality was the most difficult task because of a lack of good data, so I benchmarked UCF benefits against my own company’s benefit plans, which are known to be very competitive.

Here is a summary of the results: Continue reading →

This is Part 3 of my review of UCF teacher benefits.  If we want to attract, retain, and reward Great Teachers, we need to have competitive compensation, and benefits is a key part of the compensation package.  In Part 1, we found that access to benefits at UCF is very good.  In Part 2, we found that the quality of UCF benefit plans are very competitive as a whole.

As the cost of benefits has increased over the past decade, employers have passed a larger and larger share of medical, dental, and other premiums on to its employees.   In today’s post we will look at the share of benefits expenses that are passed on to our UCF teachers, and compare this against national averages. Continue reading →

In my most recent post we looked at the benefits UCF offers to classroom teachers.   And we saw that UCF gives teachers access to a wide range of benefits — better than what most employers (including other school districts) typically offer.

But what about the quality of the benefits UCF offers?   Just offering a plan is not enough … not all medical or dental plans offer the same types of coverage.  Are the quality of UCF teacher benefits higher or lower than those offered by other employers? Continue reading →

In my most recent posts on Rewarding Great Teachers, we have looked at base pay of our teachers.  But benefits are also an important part of total compensation.  In my next four posts, I will pull apart UCF’s benefit offering and evaluate the overall competitiveness of each component. Continue reading →

In my prior post we looked at Unionville-Chadds Ford (UCF) teacher pay.  Today we compare teacher pay in UCF to other school districts in Pennsylvania.  If we are going to attract, retain, and reward Great Teachers, our compensation needs to be competitive.  This is going to be chart-intensive.  If you don’t like data and charts,  proceed at your own risk! Continue reading →

We have seen in prior posts that teacher compensation has a unique pay structure, different from that found in almost all other industries.  And we have also seen that the factors that increase UCF teacher pay (years of experience and advanced degrees) have little or no relationship to student achievement.

In today’s post we shift our focus away from the system of pay and look at the amount of teacher pay.  How much do we pay classroom teachers, on average, in UCFSD?    If we are going to attract, retain, and reward Great Teachers, our compensation needs to be competitive. Continue reading →