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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

Teacher career ladder hearing kicks off, big crowd in auditorium…

Hearing on teacher career ladder legislation opens in the Lincoln Auditorium on Tuesday morning (Betsy Russell)
Hearing on teacher career ladder legislation opens in the Lincoln Auditorium on Tuesday morning (Betsy Russell)

There’s a big crowd in the Lincoln Auditorium this morning for the hearing on HB 222, the teacher career ladder legislation. “What you have before you is I believe a consensus piece of legislation,” House Education Chairman Reed DeMordaunt, R-Eagle, told the House Education Committee, “with something in there for everybody to like and something not to like.”

He said, “If you believe as I believe that we need to pay our teachers more, then I would encourage you to support this legislation. This puts us on a path to significantly raise salaries over the next several years. The goal is to make salaries competitive with STEM professions, and I believe we are on a path to do that. However, we also have to be fiscally responsible for our state as well. We are doing what we can afford.”

While the governor’s education task force suggested raising starting teachers’ salaries to $40,000, DeMordaunt noted that at the end of the five-year phase-in of HB 222, those would rise instead to $37,000. “That is still a 16.5 percent increase over the current starting salary,” he said.

DeMordaunt said the career ladder plan is based on a “focus on outputs,” and said, “Those outputs are student growth and achievement. If we don’t focus on that, then I believe that all we’re doing is ultimately in vain.”



Betsy Z. Russell

Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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