Ann Arbor School Board Member Christine Stead offered the following comments in an email on Ann Arbor Public Schools’ merit pay of $150 for highly effective teachers.
“In the AAPS, we are committed to having the highest quality teachers in every one of our classrooms. In recent years, we wanted to provide something monetary as an acknowledgment of what it takes to be a highly effective teacher and how much that means to us, our community and our students. We are hoping to improve on what we can offer as recognition for being a highly effective teacher in the AAPS. We have had some limitations in past budget cycles, but we also felt it was important to provide increases in compensation (salary and benefits) to all teachers, which we have been able to do for the past two years in a row (an average of a 1 percent increase in 2015 and a 2 percent increase in 2016).”
“I would not position $150 as an incentive. It is an acknowledgment of good work and a start of something we hope to improve upon. Ultimately, we hope to provide an excellent professional educational environment that is stable and an excellent environment such that young professionals want to stay with us for the duration of their career. We are working on this through improvements in compensation as well as acknowledging excellent work.”
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