Pflugerville Educators Association cites discrepancies in pay rates, requests district establish competitive salaries

Pflugerville ISD is working to address uneven pay rates for veteran and new district teachers and to make its pay scale competitive with surrounding districts.

August Plock, a Pflugerville High School teacher and president of the Pflugerville Educators Association—the district's teachers union—said he noticed last year a disparity in his salary in comparison to what teachers with the same amount of experience were being paid in surrounding school districts. After meeting with PISD's human resources department, Plock said he discovered not only was his salary lagging in comparison to other districts, but also in comparison to recently hired teachers within Pflugerville.

"My initial reason why I went [to meet with human resources] was to discuss why teachers in PISD were being paid anywhere from $2,500–$3,000 less than ... school districts [surrounding] PISD," Plock said. "At this meeting, I found out that teachers brand new to the district with the same years of experience were actually being paid a [salary competitive with other districts], but teachers who have been with the district are being paid less [than new hires]."

Plock attributes the discrepancies to the district stopping salary schedules from being readily available approximately three years ago—though employees can still view the schedule by making an appointment with the district's human resources department. Typically teachers are paid on a schedule that increases salaries annually based on experience, but Plock said the district ended the schedules and instead of annual raises has given teachers two $500 pay increases during the past three years. As a result, a teacher who is hired one year could make less than a teacher with the same experience who is hired the year after.

"When [new teachers] get hired, they get hired at a certain level, and then the following year the only raise they would get is if the school board approved a raise," Plock said. "Hypothetically ... next year a new teacher with the same amount of experience could be paid more than the teacher who was hired the year before."

But the disparities reach beyond the district's teacher-to-teacher salaries. In a comparison of PISD's salary schedule with those from surrounding districts, a teacher with a bachelor's degree and no previous teaching experience is paid a salary of $41,000 at PISD, while the same teacher could earn $42,000 at Hutto ISD, $42,500 at Round Rock ISD or approximately $43,286 at Austin ISD.

Pflugerville ISD Superintendent Alex Torrez acknowledged the discrepancies in an email to district employees dated Oct. 7. In the email, Torrez said addressing salaries and benefits is a top priority for him and the district's board of trustees. He gave no timeline for any decisions but said a plan of action will take months to develop, and the district faces hurdles with receiving lower state funding levels than surrounding ISDs.

"This will not be a quick conversation—it will take months of work to develop a plan of action to address this compensation challenge," the email stated. "We face some hurdles with our budget because we are funded at such a lower rate than surrounding districts. ... We know it is vital to include staff members from every campus and who represent various positions within the district as part of the decision-making process."

Deputy Superintendent Troy Galow said the district is currently conducting a salary study through the Texas Association of School Boards and working with district employees to address the discrepancies.

"I think if there's a message we can get out there as a district, it's ... salary is always a sensitive issue, [and] we understand that," Galow said. "I know that there are instances where incoming [staff members] are making more than existing staff, so we're looking forward to working with our current faculty and staff to review the situation, find out what the constraints are and then build a plan to get this remedied so our staff feels as valued from their perspective as we know we value them from our perspective."