(Seguin) — In its attempts to continue the progress that is going on at the local middle schools, the Seguin ISD is also considering awarding middle school teachers with $5,000.
Explaining the proposed Middle School Performance Pay Program is Seguin ISD Superintendent Dr. Matthew Gutierrez. Gutierrez says this performance pay program would essentially serve as the steppingstone to a more elite and more involved compensation program being planned for the district – a program known as TIA.
“We are looking at becoming a TIA school district, Teacher Incentive Allotment where teachers can make up to six-figure salaries and so we are in the planning phases where by 2025 teachers would qualify based on certain criteria to receive these additional dollars that is funded by the Texas Education Agency but what we are doing now because this is going to take several years, we are looking at doing something for our middle school teachers who are in the trenches. They are teaching at campuses that we are looking to transform to go from low performing to high performing and those teachers that are teaching in those tested areas math, reading, language arts, social studies eighth grade and science eighth grade to incentivize them,” said Gutierrez.
Gutierrez says this incentive of $5,000 would, of course, be paid out after teachers report academic success in their respective classrooms.
“Because they are monitoring data every single day. They are pulling intervention groups every Friday and so they are really doing a lot of work during just a very challenging time in public education and so what we are looking at doing is based on certain criteria on depending on the type of class they teach whether it’s an advanced class or a general ed class, teachers can qualify for upwards of $5,000 based on their students’ data at the end of the school year,” said Gutierrez.
Gutierrez describes this initial program to that of a practice run of what is coming down the road with the Teacher Incentive Allotment plan.
As for the funding, Gutierrez says that will have to be decided later on by the board.
“To come out of local funds, it will have to be something our board will have to approve and so first, we want to get feedback from teachers. We may fine tune it and ultimately the board will make that final decision and will make the determination if we could use local dollars to fund something like this. We all want our middle schools to turn around and to be a B or better and one of the ways we can ensure that is to recognize and honor the work that those teachers are doing every single day because middle school is challenging in a Title I school, high poverty school — it’s challenging and then you’ve got the pressure of accountability and then in the middle of all of this, TEA is changing the way the STAAR is designed and we are transitioning to STAAR 2.0. So, on top of everything else, our teachers are having to prepare for the change in STAAR in having to adapt to that,” said Gutierrez.
Gutierrez says the district is currently sharing this plan and soliciting input from both trustees and teachers. School administrators say they hope to share more details of the program with teachers when they return from the Thanksgiving holiday.