By Bernadette R. Hampton | Local public schools are often referred to as the heart of South Carolina’s communities, especially in our rural areas. By increasing the starting pay for all teachers to $40,000, our public schools can also become a stable and growing economic base to bring employment and prosperity to our struggling communities.
As of now, South Carolina’s average starting teacher salary is $32,389, and ranks 39th nationally and 10th lowest out of 12 Southeastern states. Attracting and retaining qualified teachers in our public schools requires paying them a professional living wage. A teacher’s starting salary must be comparable to that of other college graduates who have similar education and training.
When considering raising public educator’s pay to a minimum of $40,000 per year, we need to ask ourselves: Do we merely look at public education in South Carolina as an obligation? Is our public education system thought of as a necessary expense that means allowing just the minimum and most basic levels of funding as a hand-out to our state’s children, or do we consider it an investment in preparing them to be productive citizens and torch bearers for our continued economic growth?
The fact that the Abbeville School District v. State of South Carolina lawsuit took 22 years to churn to its conclusion and given that lawmakers and judicial forces fought so stridently to undermine its goal of simply bringing equity for underfunded and struggling rural school districts shows there are many who have the complete wrong idea about what our educational system is and what it seeks to accomplish. We should think of our public education system not as a cost, but a recognizable and measurable investment that fully prepares children for immediate introduction into local economic engines; an investment that yields immediate beneficial return.
A multitude of factors can determine children’s learning rates. Depending on where they live or their parent’s backgrounds (factors our children have no control over), children start their educational journeys at different places. As some have more opportunities than others, children arrive at different and polarized destinations. We should endeavor to ensure all children in all school districts arrive at equitable or similar educative destinations, giving each child the same formative background to further not just their own and their family’s economic growth, but the economic sustainability and growth of their communities as well. We want fewer children leaving schools only to become dependent on social services or safety nets, or even worse victims of unending incarceration, but instead to become income earners, generators and providers of deeper and expansive tax bases — particularly in our struggling rural communities.
There are other and deeper ways to think about the value of a $40,000 beginning salary for teachers. Above and beyond the goal of attracting quality teachers to schools in our rural and underserved communities, and ensuring their retention in those areas, imagine the stable economic base communities would glean from multiple workers earning a minimum $40,000 income. In Abbeville, there are 10 schools with a minimum of 20 teachers at each school. That would mean a minimum of 200 people in a community of approximately 25,000 people with an annual $40,000 in buying power.
The Rural School and Community Trust study concluded that an increase in per pupil spending of 20 percent, to include a recommended minimum pay rate of $40,000, would increase the high school completion rate by 22.9 percentage points, increase adult earnings by 24.6 percent and reduce the incidence of adult poverty by 19.7 percentage points.
These studies conclude that public school spending in rural communities has a particularly strong effect in the near term, and that spending is high labor intensity, high local purchase intensity and serves as a relatively high share of the local economy.
Teacher pay has a tremendous impact on a local school district’s ability to attract and retain high quality teachers and staff. Increasing public teacher salaries in South Carolina to a minimum of $40,000 will bring a lasting and immediate positive effect in our communities.
Bernadette R. Hampton is the president of the South Carolina Education Association.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!