Northwest Allen County Schools teachers are up for another pay increase, following a collective bargaining agreement that was reached between the Board of School Trustees and the Northwest Allen County Educators Association this month.

NACS teachers have seen salary increases every year since 2013.

“We’re blessed, and I’m very thankful for that,” NACS Superintendent Chris Himsel said. “Not all school corporations can say that — not because they are not committed, but because of the way the funding formulas work.”

While the starting base salary for full-time NACS teachers will increase to $41,500 — from the $41,250 agreed upon in last year’s contract with the teacher’s union — this year’s increase is less than a year ago, due to the fact that a greater amount of state funding is being devoted to employee health insurance, Himsel said.

“That is more a reflection on the increase in the cost of insurance,” Himsel said during an Oct. 26 school board meeting. “We have devoted a much greater amount towards health insurance this year than what we did a year ago, but if you add the health insurance and the salaries together, they are comparably fairly close. … I’m appreciative of the state of Indiana for not reducing the amount of monies available, because had they reduced the amount of funding available, we would not have had anything to talk about here today.”

The maximum base salary for a teacher with a Bachelor’s degree will be $66,400. For those holding a Master’s degree, that maximum increases to $70,500. Teachers who are evaluated as “effective” or “highly effective,” and have completed 120 days of work throughout the year, will see an additional $621 added to their salaries, as well as a stipend of $128.

Additional incentives include:

• Continuing professional learning (+$143)

• Gaining more than five years of experience (+175)

• Earning a Master’s degree (+$127)

• Earning a National Board Certification (+$800)

Himsel said the district offers optional incentives to encourage teachers to continue to improve their skills in the classroom. Additional compensation for experience “is simply to encourage people to stay here, as well as to try to accelerate their salary a little bit through those middle years,” he noted. “That’s been a partnership with the association to try to reach the right balance for that amount, and we are noticing that it is making a difference for some of those people who are in their mid-career.”

Master’s degrees also better equip teachers with expertise on their content area, Himsel said. He called the National Board Certification “a very rigorous process.” However, “We believe that with the support that we give through the continuous professional learning, with the talent that we have in this district, over time we can have a number of teachers who qualify for that,” he said.

The minimum amount any eligible teacher will have added to their base salary for the upcoming year is $627 with a stipend of $128.

“It was a process focused on trying to do what was right. There was recognition of how hard all our employees are working, and a commitment to wanting to make sure that we were able to recognize the efforts that they’re putting forth in terms of salary. But, there was also a recognition that there are a lot of unknowns moving forward in terms of state and federal funding. … We are dipping into our cash reserve in order to make sure that there is recognition and support for the teachers and other employees throughout the district.”

Because of the continued remote learning happening within the district as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a record number of teachers — 210 in total — have had exemplary attendance this year, which qualifies for a $102 stipend. However, because the district wants to discourage anyone with COVID-related symptoms from coming to work, that will not be in effect next year. Instead, any money that would otherwise have been paid out for exemplary attendance will be distributed equally among anyone who qualifies for a compensation increase. COVID-related absences will also not affect supplemental retirement pay, Himsel said.

NACS continues to be among the bottom five per-student funded school districts in the state. However, the current funding structure helped NACS emerge from a pay cut to teachers in 2010 to provide salary increases every year for the past nine years.

“We’re very blessed and thankful for what the state has done to put us in that position,” Himsel said. “… This structure was agreed upon in 2013, and we’ve been tweaking it each year since, and I actually feel as though we are really close to having it right. Now it’s a matter of making sure that we continue to try to put as much money towards increasing salaries as we can. That’s an issue nationwide, and there is some significant data to support that.”

As of 2010, no local property taxes support employee salaries in Indiana school districts.

“It comes from the state of Indiana, which is why the state funding formula does matter,” Himsel said. “It is why the amount of investment and commitment to public education is important at the state level in terms of making sure that we can compete for talent and make sure that as talented teachers retire, we can replace them with other talented teachers.”

According to Himsel, the average teacher salary was previously about 85% of the national per-capita median for about a 50- to 60-year period. That number has since fallen to about 60% in the state of Indiana.

“The state of Indiana is about $500 million behind when taking inflation into consideration, compared to where we were back in 2010,” Himsel said. “When you take a look at the percentage of investment in Indiana’s gross domestic product, Indiana is about $1.5 billion behind where it was if you go back to the percentage that was invested in 2010.”