Todd Hubler
Trust between Madison teachers and the district has been put to the test after a summer school raise was promised, taken away, and given back in less than three months time.
The discrepancy began in May when teachers were forwarded an email from the Madison school district’s human resources office announcing a raise for all summer school teachers.
“Thank you for your commitment to summer school,” the email read. “Because we know that Summer School is so important for closing gaps, we’re investing more in pay and have significantly increased the compensations for teachers. The pay rate for internal teachers has been raised to $750/week and the pay rate for external teachers has been raised to $600/week, effective this summer.”
But the rates listed were inaccurate. A change to the employee handbook reduced hours for summer teaching from six hours a day to five. The district either failed to calculate for this change or didn’t inform teachers about it.
At five hours per day, or 25 hours per week, summer school teachers make $625 per week — $125 less than the weekly rate they were promised in the May email and just $25 more than last year’s weekly rate.
On Tuesday of this week, Rachel Strauch-Nelson, the district’s media and government relations director, said the district now plans to pay teachers what was promised in the May announcement.
“We’re aware that some employees may not have been aware of the change in hours. Because of that, we are planning to use our previous employee handbook language and pay teachers for 30 hours of work per week (or $750/week),” Strauch-Nelson wrote to Isthmus.
Strauch-Nelson added that the district plans to stay with the old 30 hours per week employee handbook language for years to come. As of Tuesday, that online handbook had not yet been updated to reflect this.
While the pay will come as a relief for many teachers, damage has already been done.
Sarah Daines, a 4K teacher at Thoreau, signed up to teach summer school in March, learned about the raise in May, and didn’t find out about the reduction in hours until she filled out her first time sheet on June 16, the Friday before summer school started.
“In the past it’s been six hours per day including planning time at an hourly rate,” Daines says. “But then sometime [between May 6 and June 16] it was decided that it’s going to be $25 an hour but for only five hours per day, per week.”
For Daines, it meant the loss of a week’s worth of wages she had been expecting. She had already budgeted the raise into her summer childcare options for her 9-year-old son, whom she enrolled in the Goodman Community Center’s summer day camp.
“It’s a really great summer program and he really wanted to go,” says Daines. “He could have done something else for free in the mornings and then been with me in the afternoon but I thought okay, this raise will be the perfect amount of money.”
News of the miscommunication spread quickly through Madison Teachers Inc.’s (MTI) Facebook page, with teachers looking for answers and guidance on what to do.
Many, including Daines, wrote letters to the district expressing frustration and asking for an explanation. MTI had already filed a grievance against the district.
In an email statement, Doug Keillor, the union’s executive director, said, “MTI is aware of the situation and is in communication with the District about this. We believe that the District needs to honor their initial communication with summer school teachers that promised a salary of $750 per week. We are hopeful to resolve this dispute via the grievance resolution process.”
The pay discrepancy has fueled mistrust of the administration among teachers, Daines says. She’s heard some say they’re considering not teaching next summer.
“When you get something in writing you expect it to be the final word,” says Daines. “Some people have called it a bait and switch. I don’t know if it was underhanded, but you kind of question whether it was. My trust has been challenged.”
Daines was relieved when she learned Tuesday that the district had decided to pay the rates it announced in May. But she remains upset about how the matter was handled, especially after an email to teachers framed the return to the rates promised in May as “additional compensation.”
“We should not be put into a confusing situation in which we are forced to question and challenge conflicting information given to us by the district,” she says. “I am relieved that the district will honor the pay rate last communicated to us, but I feel this experience represents a bigger communication problem district-wide.”
