To The Editor:
A school choice teacher pay raise idea:
There are approximately 687,000 children enrolled in public schools across Oklahoma (taking out 8,000 online students). Take the $289 Million that have been and divide by the number of school-age children in Oklahoma and you get $420 per child.
This is the amount that each child will receive in the form of a voucher or certificate. On this voucher or certificate, the child and or parents can designate how much they want to allocate to the teacher and/or teachers of their choice (with the max of $5,000).
They will turn the voucher or certificate into their school district. The school district then will add up and document and send to the state to redeem the pay increase for in-class instructional teachers. Some teacher might get the max while other teachers may not.
This is a fully transparent and competitive way to give the increase. It also gives fairness to school districts that receive greater foundation state aid per pupil versus other school districts that receive little to no foundation state aid per pupil.
The state should set aside enough state appropriated dollars to fund the payroll taxes that will be increased and the increased state contributions to the teacher pension fund.
This should be an additional $36 million.
Sincerely,
Rod Cleveland
Editor’s Note: Cleveland is the District 1 Commissioner for Cleveland County, Oklahoma.CapitolBeatOK encourages respectful reactions and responses to this pay increase proposal.
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CapitolBeatOK welcomes letters to the editor. All submissions should be no more than 400 words and e-mailed to editor@capitolbeatok.com. Please include a contact phone number for verification purposes. All letters are subject to editing. Letters to the editor will remain posted for one week at the editor’s discretion.
CapitolBeatOK welcomes letters to the editor. All submissions should be no more than 400 words and e-mailed to editor@capitolbeatok.com. Please include a contact phone number for verification purposes. All letters are subject to editing. Letters to the editor will remain posted for one week at the editor’s discretion.