Access to a high quality teacher is the greatest in school determinant of a child’s success. Great teachers must be recruited, grown, retained and celebrated. In recent years, teacher salaries have been impacted by rising costs of living. In the past two years, increasing salaries of teachers has been a shared priority across government. Governor Youngkin and the General Assembly have invested $232.5 million for a 5% Compensation Supplement effective August 1, 2022, $527.1 million for a 5% teacher compensation supplement effective July 1, 2023, and $54.6 million for a 2% Compensation Supplement effective January 1, 2024. The Administration is committed to continuing to invest in compensation that supports our goal of having a high-quality teacher in front of every student in Virginia and rewards their impact.

Senate Bill 1215 (SB 1215) charged the Virginia Department of Education to convene a work group to “consider and make recommendations no later than November 1, 2023, on the appropriateness, feasibility, potential fiscal impact, and potential unintended consequences of certain definitions for and calculations of competitive teacher pay."

From August to October 2023, parents, teachers, and school leaders from across the Commonwealth convened to discuss teacher compensation in Virginia as outlined by SB 1215. Across different work group sessions, stakeholders discussed teacher compensation and the definition of “competitive." The Work Group focused on the following six themes:

1. Virginia teachers deserve competitive compensation. The working group was asked to define “competitive compensation."

2. The definition of competitive compensation should vary across the Commonwealth to reflect differences in regional markets, role types, competitive degree opportunities, and teacher responsibilities.

3. To ensure competitive wages occur, pay scales need to be attractive enough to recruit and incentivize high performing teachers to stay in the classroom, work in high need roles and placements, and invest in high performing teachers early in their career (years 0-5).

4. School divisions, principals, and teachers should be included in designing and implementing comprehensive teacher compensation strategies.

5. School divisions and principals should be empowered to differentiate competitive salaries for high need roles, subjects, specialty areas, school types, and for additional responsibilities.

6. If school divisions choose to use differentiated models, competitive compensation models that reward teacher effectiveness must be clear, fair, and reliable.

In summary of their discussions, the Work Group identified the following five recommendations for the definition of “competitive" compensation that recruits and retains high quality teachers in every Virginia classroom:

1. The definition of competitive compensation needs to be flexible to allow for variabilities in roles, markets responsibilities, and regions.

2. The Commonwealth needs to continue to invest in teacher compensation, with a focus on recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers in high need areas.

3. Competitive compensation should not be limited to salary (i.e., benefits).

4. School divisions should be empowered to differentiate compensation based on regional markets, role types, competitive degree opportunities, and responsibilities.

5. An effective teacher compensation requires an investment in a teacher data system to provide real-time information and allow the state to better understand, support, and invest in teachers.