Ideally, I'd restrict the comparison to large unified districts that are near SF but that would mean ignoring most of the districts in San Mateo which may not be comparable as districts but are very real alternatives for teachers (like you). You are absolutely right that high school districts on average pay more than unified school districts. In fact, in the Bay Area, elementary school districts also pay a bit more than unified districts. (simple unweighted means - I haven't checked whether still true when weighted by student numbers). This is driven in part by having more money per student and in part by requiring fewer staff per student. Palo Alto and Santa Clara are two unified districts that are in the fortunate position of having so much money that they can pay high salaries and have high staff numbers.
My point in emphasizing the San Mateo Union High comparison was not to say that SFUSD could or should match it on staff numbers or salary but to emphasize that there is a very real trade-off between the two that results in huge differences in salary. Given the amount SFUSD spends on compensation, it could pay much higher salaries at the cost of reduced staff numbers. SFUSD has, consciously or unconsciously, and with the acquiescence of UESF along the way, chosen to be a high staff low salary district. When you have a lot of (cheaper) early career staff, student achievement is surely affected, partly because early career staff may be less effective and partly because a chunk of your more experienced and higher paid staff are needed to mentor and supplement the junior staff.
Long Beach has about 15% early career staff (to SFUSD's 31%) and the early career staff earn almost exactly the same as SFUSD's. Of course, retention may be affected by what your future earning prospects are more than by what you're currently earning and Long Beach does pay more to more senior staff.
These are all good and reasonable points about the actual salaries and benefits. Having taught in San Mateo County (middle school level, so K-8), I have firsthand knowledge of these tradeoffs!
However, my concern was/is about comparing the teacher-student STAFFING ratios between unlike districts.
A pure HS district will naturally have much different teacher-student ratios than a district that includes K-8 schools. I don't think it's reasonable to make a comparison that causes the unified district such as SFUSD to look overly staffed by contrast.
Again speaking firsthand as someone on the front lines, I think it's fair to say that we are DEFINITELY NOT overstaffed.
One thing this got me thinking about: when I taught in OUSD, I taught at a small school (about 300 students) in the flatlands. We felt incredibly understaffed, given the needs we had — and this contributed to me burning out and eventually leaving the classroom. Of course when schools are too small, they are much more likely to feel understaffed — which I imagine contributes to turnover. Another negative feature of small schools, unfortunately.
Thank you, Paul, for yet another outstanding analysis! As the district and UESF work on a contract agreement over the summer I hope they keep two of your findings top of mind: 1) that salary increases today--as deserved and necessary as they may be--result in larger pension liabilities in the future; and 2) that retiree health benefits are increasingly crowding out funding for classroom teaching and learning. Thank you for highlighting the generational funding injustice that exists at SFUSD now and might worsen if both parties at the negotiating table don't address this soon.
For your #1 point, it sounds like even though they're "deserved and necessary," you sound unsure if teachers should get an increase due to "future liabilities." To put things into perspective, the poverty line in SF is below 82,000, and there are many teachers who make below this (myself included even though I just finished my 5th year of teaching in the district). Inflation has increased by 17% since 2019, so without any notable salary increases since then, all us employees have essentially taking a pay cut.
I guess I'm not sure what you think the solution would be--should we not give salary increases then? I know a great number of coworkers who are leaving for greener pastures after this year, so while long term plans are not necessarily a bad thing, not increasing salaries compared to nearby districts aren't going to motivate teachers to stay in SFUSD, thus potentially decreasing the pool of qualified candidiates to teach our students.
Hi, ST, and thank you for comments. Perhaps my statement was unartful and easily misinterpreted--I apologize for that, and want to emphasize that I believe SFUSD teachers should be paid MORE. My concern with the SFUSD's approach towards certificated employee compensation is that it is temporally disconnected--that is to say, teachers' compensation is currently heavily skewed towards the future, or BACK-LOADED. A teacher at SFUSD can expect less salary today with the promise of more generous defined benefits (pension, retiree health, etc.) one they retire. As Paul's analysis shows, this shifts today's costs to be borne by FUTURE SFUSD students; this Bellwether Education Partners white paper is also good context: https://bellwether.org/blog/school-districts-spend-on-pensions/. What I personally would like to see for SFUSD's teachers is FRONT-LOADED pay, so that our younger teachers can make AT LEAST $125,000 to start then with corresponding salary steps from there. In exchange, we rethink retiree benefits, perhaps changing from defined benefits to defined contributions, and moving the obligations for retiree medical from SFUSD to the federal Medicare program, which is what most school districts do. All of which is to say, there is a lot to think about, and we all care deeply about how to show we value our teachers while ensuring that SFUSD's budget reflects our local priorities and values, and that the state doesn't take over and make cuts without input from families, students, and teachers. Finally, I hope you are able to enjoy a restful and restoring summer break! Please know that I'm grateful for the work you and your colleagues do for SFUSD's young scholars!
Thank you for explaining your thoughts--I can definitely understand more about what you meant in your comment! I do agree that SFUSD has generous retirement benefits, maybe in hopes of retaining those in the long run, but I think I also share your view of front-loading pay. I admit I am biased because my family and I might be priced out of SF at some point, or have to move elsewhere depending on my partner's job, as some others might also have to, and while I'm happy some of my colleagues who are able to stay in the city can enjoy these benefits, it would benefit all teachers who are currently here to enjoy a higher salary. I agree there's a lot to think about, and I'm not a budgeting expert, but it sounds like we're in agreement about focusing on paying teachers more in the present.
Thank you for your care about SFUSD, and I appreciate you taking your time to explain!
Some thoughts about average salary and early career teachers...
Having taught in San Mateo County, I observed that the districts there place great value on retaining teachers and on having a high percentage of their teachers be very experienced senior teachers.
Developing talent and retaining later-career teachers is an important focus of their staffing plans. Take a look at Hillsborough City School District (a K-8 district) to understand the kinds of incentives a high-achieving and high-stability district puts into place to ensure that it makes sense for excellent and experienced teachers to remain in the classroom.
Meanwhile, SFUSD's staffing relies on hiring brand new or early career teachers as much as possible. This is why SFUSD is considered an excellent talent development pipeline for other Bay Area districts.
Only us ride-or-die career teachers stay in SFUSD. You've got to WANT to stay here because SFUSD does very little to encourage us to remain in the classroom.
Brilliant analysis here. Question re Figure 2: Are we making a valid apples-to-apples comparison here when we compare pure HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICTS (such as San Mateo and Sequoia) with SFUSD?
Unified school districts include elementaries, which have many MORE teachers per student than the Union High School Districts such as San Mateo and Sequoia. This is why Palo Alto Unified has numbers more like SFUSD's than San Mateo Unified HS District's numbers.
High schools have fewer teachers to students than elementaries, so that will definitely skew these comparisons.
It might be worth also adding in the elementary and K-8 districts that feed into those Union HS Districts. These would include Foster-City-San-Mateo elementary, Hillsborough City School District, Menlo Park, Redwood City, and the other San Mateo County-based elementaries.
Another thought for you -- where does Long Beach Unified fall on this scale?
@cheesemonkeySF
Ideally, I'd restrict the comparison to large unified districts that are near SF but that would mean ignoring most of the districts in San Mateo which may not be comparable as districts but are very real alternatives for teachers (like you). You are absolutely right that high school districts on average pay more than unified school districts. In fact, in the Bay Area, elementary school districts also pay a bit more than unified districts. (simple unweighted means - I haven't checked whether still true when weighted by student numbers). This is driven in part by having more money per student and in part by requiring fewer staff per student. Palo Alto and Santa Clara are two unified districts that are in the fortunate position of having so much money that they can pay high salaries and have high staff numbers.
My point in emphasizing the San Mateo Union High comparison was not to say that SFUSD could or should match it on staff numbers or salary but to emphasize that there is a very real trade-off between the two that results in huge differences in salary. Given the amount SFUSD spends on compensation, it could pay much higher salaries at the cost of reduced staff numbers. SFUSD has, consciously or unconsciously, and with the acquiescence of UESF along the way, chosen to be a high staff low salary district. When you have a lot of (cheaper) early career staff, student achievement is surely affected, partly because early career staff may be less effective and partly because a chunk of your more experienced and higher paid staff are needed to mentor and supplement the junior staff.
Long Beach has about 15% early career staff (to SFUSD's 31%) and the early career staff earn almost exactly the same as SFUSD's. Of course, retention may be affected by what your future earning prospects are more than by what you're currently earning and Long Beach does pay more to more senior staff.
These are all good and reasonable points about the actual salaries and benefits. Having taught in San Mateo County (middle school level, so K-8), I have firsthand knowledge of these tradeoffs!
However, my concern was/is about comparing the teacher-student STAFFING ratios between unlike districts.
A pure HS district will naturally have much different teacher-student ratios than a district that includes K-8 schools. I don't think it's reasonable to make a comparison that causes the unified district such as SFUSD to look overly staffed by contrast.
Again speaking firsthand as someone on the front lines, I think it's fair to say that we are DEFINITELY NOT overstaffed.
Excellent analysis. Thank you for doing this!
One thing this got me thinking about: when I taught in OUSD, I taught at a small school (about 300 students) in the flatlands. We felt incredibly understaffed, given the needs we had — and this contributed to me burning out and eventually leaving the classroom. Of course when schools are too small, they are much more likely to feel understaffed — which I imagine contributes to turnover. Another negative feature of small schools, unfortunately.
Thank you, Paul, for yet another outstanding analysis! As the district and UESF work on a contract agreement over the summer I hope they keep two of your findings top of mind: 1) that salary increases today--as deserved and necessary as they may be--result in larger pension liabilities in the future; and 2) that retiree health benefits are increasingly crowding out funding for classroom teaching and learning. Thank you for highlighting the generational funding injustice that exists at SFUSD now and might worsen if both parties at the negotiating table don't address this soon.
For your #1 point, it sounds like even though they're "deserved and necessary," you sound unsure if teachers should get an increase due to "future liabilities." To put things into perspective, the poverty line in SF is below 82,000, and there are many teachers who make below this (myself included even though I just finished my 5th year of teaching in the district). Inflation has increased by 17% since 2019, so without any notable salary increases since then, all us employees have essentially taking a pay cut.
I guess I'm not sure what you think the solution would be--should we not give salary increases then? I know a great number of coworkers who are leaving for greener pastures after this year, so while long term plans are not necessarily a bad thing, not increasing salaries compared to nearby districts aren't going to motivate teachers to stay in SFUSD, thus potentially decreasing the pool of qualified candidiates to teach our students.
Hi, ST, and thank you for comments. Perhaps my statement was unartful and easily misinterpreted--I apologize for that, and want to emphasize that I believe SFUSD teachers should be paid MORE. My concern with the SFUSD's approach towards certificated employee compensation is that it is temporally disconnected--that is to say, teachers' compensation is currently heavily skewed towards the future, or BACK-LOADED. A teacher at SFUSD can expect less salary today with the promise of more generous defined benefits (pension, retiree health, etc.) one they retire. As Paul's analysis shows, this shifts today's costs to be borne by FUTURE SFUSD students; this Bellwether Education Partners white paper is also good context: https://bellwether.org/blog/school-districts-spend-on-pensions/. What I personally would like to see for SFUSD's teachers is FRONT-LOADED pay, so that our younger teachers can make AT LEAST $125,000 to start then with corresponding salary steps from there. In exchange, we rethink retiree benefits, perhaps changing from defined benefits to defined contributions, and moving the obligations for retiree medical from SFUSD to the federal Medicare program, which is what most school districts do. All of which is to say, there is a lot to think about, and we all care deeply about how to show we value our teachers while ensuring that SFUSD's budget reflects our local priorities and values, and that the state doesn't take over and make cuts without input from families, students, and teachers. Finally, I hope you are able to enjoy a restful and restoring summer break! Please know that I'm grateful for the work you and your colleagues do for SFUSD's young scholars!
Hi DLu,
Thank you for explaining your thoughts--I can definitely understand more about what you meant in your comment! I do agree that SFUSD has generous retirement benefits, maybe in hopes of retaining those in the long run, but I think I also share your view of front-loading pay. I admit I am biased because my family and I might be priced out of SF at some point, or have to move elsewhere depending on my partner's job, as some others might also have to, and while I'm happy some of my colleagues who are able to stay in the city can enjoy these benefits, it would benefit all teachers who are currently here to enjoy a higher salary. I agree there's a lot to think about, and I'm not a budgeting expert, but it sounds like we're in agreement about focusing on paying teachers more in the present.
Thank you for your care about SFUSD, and I appreciate you taking your time to explain!
Some thoughts about average salary and early career teachers...
Having taught in San Mateo County, I observed that the districts there place great value on retaining teachers and on having a high percentage of their teachers be very experienced senior teachers.
Developing talent and retaining later-career teachers is an important focus of their staffing plans. Take a look at Hillsborough City School District (a K-8 district) to understand the kinds of incentives a high-achieving and high-stability district puts into place to ensure that it makes sense for excellent and experienced teachers to remain in the classroom.
Meanwhile, SFUSD's staffing relies on hiring brand new or early career teachers as much as possible. This is why SFUSD is considered an excellent talent development pipeline for other Bay Area districts.
Only us ride-or-die career teachers stay in SFUSD. You've got to WANT to stay here because SFUSD does very little to encourage us to remain in the classroom.
Brilliant analysis here. Question re Figure 2: Are we making a valid apples-to-apples comparison here when we compare pure HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICTS (such as San Mateo and Sequoia) with SFUSD?
Unified school districts include elementaries, which have many MORE teachers per student than the Union High School Districts such as San Mateo and Sequoia. This is why Palo Alto Unified has numbers more like SFUSD's than San Mateo Unified HS District's numbers.
High schools have fewer teachers to students than elementaries, so that will definitely skew these comparisons.
It might be worth also adding in the elementary and K-8 districts that feed into those Union HS Districts. These would include Foster-City-San-Mateo elementary, Hillsborough City School District, Menlo Park, Redwood City, and the other San Mateo County-based elementaries.
Another thought for you -- where does Long Beach Unified fall on this scale?