Teacher salaries vs leadership salaries

[Current parent]

One of the reasons I have seen for the high headmaster and CFO salaries is to be competitive with other NAIS schools, especially on the East Coast. If that is used for justification, then I think the same should hold true for the AA teachers. It is my understanding that AA teacher salaries are not even that decent compared to APS teacher salaries. If we want the brightest and best educating our bright students, then we need to pay them accordingly (as the Head of School and CFO are paid).

Of course, none of this is even possible with a quickly fading endowment. For that reason, I personally think the salaries of the leadership should be drastically cut to be commensurate with the teacher salaries.

[Jane Doe]

The median salary of an APS teacher is 43,000. The median salary of an Albuquerque Academy teacher is around 63,000.

[Theo]

Current parent,

I couldn’t agree more.

I don’t see how anyone with the Academy’s best interests in mind would find that proposal unreasonable.

Cut the bloated salaries of the leadership.

This may not be the whole solution, but it sure is an obvious and easy place to start, unless I’m really missing something here.

[oldfac]

I would suggest that using the comparison of median salaries of APS to AA faculty is not the correct way of looking at this. At AA, we have a graying population and therefore a disproportionate number of faculty have +20 years of experience and therefore skew the median salary. It also struck me last spring at our faculty “in-service” that when Andy justified his compensation package by comparing his salary to other independent schools of similar size and success, that he and the board should therefore also compensate faculty using the same calculus, if this is truly the measuring stick that we reward performance. In addition, there are many faculty that have numerous awards and national recognitions that may or may not be included in the calculus. There is no way of knowing how we measure up. Perhaps a published salary grid might be a useful tool. In addition, in light of the metoo movement, how do we know if women are compensated equally to men?

[Jane Doe]

Just given terminology, the “median” is resistant to outliers and therefore would not skew the result. The mean or the average would.

[Andy’s Salary Comparison]

It would be interesting to see how the Board justifies Andy’s salary. I found an article from 2017 about Head of School salaries and what drives compensation. In schools with very large endowments, the pay is higher. The school’s financial health is absolutely tied to Head compensation, and in schools that are revenue driven, that compensation is less.

My personal belief is that the Board and Andy believe the Academy is a peer of very elite independent schools on the east coast, where salaries are exponentially higher than in Albuquerque (as is the cost of living).

And, I can only guess that the reference to schools with “similar outcomes,” refers to the number of National Merit Scholars the school matriculated. If there is some other “outcome” that is being used I would like to be corrected. And, I do not believe that is a valid measure of the Academy’s outcomes for the reasons stated under ABC123, coupled with the ranking of our public schools (horrible). In all other areas of the country with the supposed “comparable” there are decent (and in some cases, excellent) public schools, and many other truly academic private schools as choices. So, your potential merit scholars are spread out among many institutions. Of course the Academy has the most National Merit Scholars as it is the only school for gifted kids. The likelihood that gifted students would not achieve National Merit status had they chosen another school is probably slim. The Academy does not take average kids and turn them into National Merit Scholars! That gifted students are engaged by some fabulous faculty here at Academy is a testament to the faculty. But, I don’t see what Andy has to do with that.

[IWasAtTheMeeting2]

APS teacher salaries are also based on a 6.5 hour work day and 30 minute duty-free lunch. AA faculty work an 8 hour day plus they are expected to put in time beyond those 8 hours. The 184 vs. 182 days that make up a faculty year (2 days are inservice days) will make APS vs. AA salaries closer to the same.

[Jane Doe]

I converted the hourly rate of teachers at Albuquerque Academy to match the criteria of the APS teachers. At an 8 hour day minimum with overtime and the extra 2 service days, teachers at academy make over 70,000/year.

[Jane Doe’s Math Needs Correction I Think]

Correct me if I am calculating this incorrectly but this is what I came up with:

APS Teacher:
6.5 hours X 182 days= 1,183 hours
Assume $40,000 salary \ 1,183 hours=
$33.81 per hour

AA Teacher:
8 hours X 184 days = 1,472 hours
Assume $40,000 salary \ 1,472 hours =
$27.17 per hour

Or conversely for an AA Teacher to receive the equivalent hourly or their APS peer of $33.81 per hour they would have to make a salary of
$49,768.32.

I do not see how Jane Doe arrived at a total of $70,000. Let me know if anyone comes up with a more favorable version.

Both APS and AA teachers are underpaid IMHO.

[Jane Doe]

I am close with someone who works as a teacher at academy and I can assure you they make more than $27.17/hour.

[Jane Doe]

Going along with that, I assume you took the 40,000/year from 2008, which not an accurate representation of their 2018 salary.

[mytwocents]

I see what you’re getting at here. I’d like to throw a couple of other points into the mix, if I may:

1) Teachers in APS are often hired right out of university, with brand-new teaching licenses. Some of them are fantastic, but certainly not all (I have kids in APS and we’ve had some of both!). But take into consideration that a new teacher teaching kindergarten has a vastly different background and education than our AA teachers, the great majority of whom are experienced educators when they join the school. A large proportion of Academy’s teachers have M.A.s or even Ph.D.s, and a fair number have taught at the college level before coming to us. Also, many if not most of Academy’s teachers with advanced degrees have earned those degrees in their subject areas (for example, mathematics or English or art), rather than in education.

2) Although AA teachers are paid more than their APS counterparts, I think we should take into account that, unlike any public school district, Academy does not have a pay scale. Each teacher negotiates his or her salary when he or she is hired. There is no scale of increases related to length of tenure (or since we don’t have tenure – we work year-to-year – length of time at the school), nor to any other factor other than getting an advanced degree. So what’s interesting is that we teachers only know what we ourselves make. There’s no structure for increases in faculty compensation, which can make some of us feel rather hopeless about any kind of meaningful career advancement.

[mytwocents]

And one more thing: We don’t know year-to-year whether we’ll be getting a raise, a “bonus,” or nothing. It depends on the school’s finances, which I understand. But it does make it difficult to plan ahead.

“Nobody goes into education to get rich” is what I’ve always thought. I teach because I love teaching and working with young people. But finding out about Andy’s salary, and the school’s fiscal mismanagement, is deeply disappointing to me.

[Current parent]

My point above is that AA teacher salaries should be competitive with other NAIS schools, as Mr. Watson’s salary supposedly is – especially if that is the criteria the Board uses.

I did come across some NAIS data from 2015-16. If this data is correct, it sounds like our teachers are paid fairly, but Mr. Watson is WAY overpaid:

[Current parent]

I’m not sure why the link didn’t post. You can cut and paste this into your browser:

Click to access NAISFactsAtAGlance201516.pdf

[Author]

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