KINGSPORT — It’s official.
Kingsport City Schools teachers will have performance-based pay starting in the 2014-15 school year in August as part of a new differentiated pay plan.
That means less of an emphasis on advanced degrees but more on the teacher evaluation scores, with teachers after the first three years getting a bump in pay for scoring a 3, 4 or 5 on their evaluations, which are based in part on value-added test scores of students (or the scores of the school in which they teach if they are in a non-tested subject).
The Board of Education voted Thursday night 5-0 to approve the recommended differentiated pay plan for 2014-15, which Superintendent Lyle Ailshie said has been given the go-ahead from the Department of Education in Nashville after some minor tweaks.
In neighboring Sullivan County the school board Monday night approved a differentiated pay plan that still takes into consideration advanced degrees.
The “single lane” salary scale, put together by a committee of teachers, starts at $38,500 for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree, and such newcomers would get three years of raises not based on performance scores, up to $41,500.
Then, the 90-step salary scale would top out at $64,000, with each step being equal to $250 for a level 3 evaluation, $500 for a level 4 and $750 for a level 5.
Ailshie said it is possible that steps could be increased to $300, depending on how the numbers work out the first year and the cost of implementing a phase 2, which would give teachers a stipend for being mentors to younger and/or more inexperienced teachers or teacher leaders in their building.
For an expanded version of this article, please see Monday’s print edition or our expanded electronic edition.