Financial Fun with Devyn, Episode 1: History of Teacher Salary

In this new series, Superintendent Dau will discuss PCSD’s finances with the Business Administrator, Devyn Dayley. Tune in for their latest video update to stay informed on some of the key discussions concerning the financial side of Provo City School District.

We are trying something new here in Provo City School District. So this week we are doing a video cast, if you will, and I have my friend here, Devyn Dayley, who is our business administrator. Welcome Devyn.

Devyn Dayley: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Wendy Dau: So we’re gonna entitle these little episodes Financial Fun with Devyn.

Hi, this is fun.

One of the questions that we keep getting, Devyn, all the time is just about the WPU, the 4% increase that the legislature awarded us. How come we pay less than other districts? And I just thought it would be great if we could just. I could kinda ask you some questions, you could answer and explain some things and then maybe we’ll get some people that like even write in and ask us some questions.

Devyn Dayley: I would love it.

Wendy Dau: And then we could answer ’em and hopefully help people understand our very large budget, but all of its constraints a little bit better. How, how’s that sound?

Devyn Dayley: That sounds great.

Wendy Dau: Okay. Awesome. So one of the primary things that we hear in our district all the time is about how our salaries are lower than our two closest districts.

Provo City School Districts first year teacher salaries just under 58,000.

Devyn Dayley: Correct.

Wendy Dau: And then our partner districts are 60 and above, right?

Devyn Dayley: Yep.

Wendy Dau: Okay. So one of the things that we are trying to prioritize based on hearing this from our employees is we wanna bump that salary up, like try to get it as close to or above $60,000.

So. Talk to us about what we’ve done so far in the past, like even before I was here. To try to help boost teacher salaries.

Devyn Dayley: The last Truth in Taxation in 2022 was primarily to increase teacher salaries. So that year there is a significant bump and we’ve been trying for years to do that. But the neighboring districts have also been doing their taxes and being able to increase those, those salaries. So it hasn’t been as great as we were hoping it would bring that gap a little bit closer together. So we had to get a little bit creative and we’ve- last year we really looked at what the salary schedule was and where we saw the huge difference is when people had been here for a while.

Right? There’s a lot of benefits to being in Provo. Provo’s a great District to be in. We do a lot of work with our teachers in professional development and mentoring and provide a lot of really great resources.

Wendy Dau: The supports, right? Yeah.

Devyn Dayley: And in a small school district, we’re able to know a lot of teachers by name.

Wendy Dau: I know. Yes.

Devyn Dayley: And so it’s great to be able to work with them directly. And so it probably is one of the reasons why it was so important for me to be able to figure out something for those teachers that have been around for a long time. So I worked a little bit with a couple of other districts who have more of a longevity style and they, they worked with me on, and some of the ideas that we were putting together.

So in our meetings with the teachers about how we were gonna do things with their salaries one of the ideas that I came up with was a longevity bonus. And it’s a longevity bump, so it’s not a one time, it was extra steps added onto their salary. And our steps are $925 between step, and that’s one of the ways that our district has fallen behind is because we only do $925 a step. And then possibly a COLA on top of that.

Wendy Dau: The COLA stands for just a cost of living adjustment, right?

Devyn Dayley: And other districts, they have more of a larger percentage, but then they freeze their salary schedule and don’t add more steps to the bottom. So if a teacher’s here for 50 years, they could catch up with, with, with Alpine and Nebo.

Wendy Dau: Oh, just 50 years, huh? That’s not very long.

Devyn Dayley: But we don’t really want to make people work until they can’t stand up in front of the classroom.

Wendy Dau: Maybe not.

Devyn Dayley: So I look to see what, what our, what our range of teachers were. You know, we have a lot that have been here for five years. That’s typically about the time we start losing teachers to other districts is ’cause that’s where that, that gap starts growing.

Wendy Dau: That’s where, that’s what I feel like teachers will say, I wanna be in Provo and then I’m gonna, because I get all of this support and then year three, four, as I, I can increase my salary so much by moving to another district. So now I feel confident I’m gonna go ahead and, and-

Devyn Dayley: Correct.

Wendy Dau: And bee-line up for somewhere else, right?

Devyn Dayley: Because when they go to the other districts, they get those years of experience and it already gives them a fairly big bump.

Wendy Dau: Okay.

Devyn Dayley: But I, I know that a lot of teachers have stayed in Provo because they do love that small district feel.

Wendy Dau: Yes. Right.

Devyn Dayley: And so what we did was we added a certain number of steps for people who had been in the district as teachers for five years, 10 years, 15 years and 20 years.

So if they’d been here 20 years, they got the five, 10, and 15 year, got a lot, and the 20 year and then the 15 got the five, 10, and 15. So a lot of the teachers were caught up quite a bit in, there’s not, not all the way, were still a little bit lower, but we were able to make it a, a lot more palatable for them to stay.

So we get to keep some of our really good teachers who have been here forever and who it, it is really important, especially in the economy today with the increases in food and living costs, having a, a sustainable income that grows more is important for those teachers. So we really worked hard on making sure that that was, that that was the case.

And so you can see before we did the longevity, this is a teacher that had been there for 20 years, so their salary was right around $77,000. Alpine’s was about $22,000 more.

Wendy Dau: Wow.

Devyn Dayley: Not quite 22, but you know, right between 21 and 22 and Nebo was about $11,000 higher. So that really made a huge difference for a lot of our teachers that the same teacher the next year, or with the longevity bonus was now doing 87,000.

So a lot of those 20 year teachers, they did get about a $10,000 increase.

Wendy Dau: That’s huge.

Devyn Dayley: Which was really big, but didn’t quite close the gap.

Wendy Dau: Right.

Devyn Dayley: I know this year the legislature gave them a $1,400 increase across the board for all teachers. But that doesn’t help us close the gap.

Wendy Dau: Close the gap.

Devyn Dayley: Because every school district got that, and that’s one of the challenges when they give it across the board and not to the WPU, because then we can, we only can give those increases to teachers rather than to all of our employees. Okay. Those are good things to know.

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