Jackson County Board of Education authorized a new differentiated pay plan to provide financial incentives for teachers who take on extra responsibilities or meet state accountability goals.
Director of Schools Jason Hardy said the plan targets three specific areas including hard-to-staff positions where the district struggles to find enough educators. Hardy said the initiative also rewards instructional leaders and provides performance-based bonuses for teachers and administrators when schools perform well on state accountability measures.
“We just want to be able to give opportunities for those teachers that do go above and beyond, that wants to be a leader in the school and be a part of that leadership team or they want to be an evaluator or you know, one of those roles,” Hardy said. “And also, we want to give some incentive, it’s never enough, but we want to give some incentive to doing well on these accountability measures that the state has given us.”
Hardy said the funding for the incentives comes from the school system’s general purpose fund. Hardy said the reward amounts for performance and instructional roles range from $100 to $1,000.
“If you do well on the T-CAP, your students do well, you’re rewarded in some way,” Hardy said. “If your school does well, the whole school’s rewarded. So those are just some areas that we can try to give back to our teachers. Again, it’s not enough, but it is something.”
The board also approved bus contracts for the upcoming year. Hardy said the contracts include a 4 percent raise, matching the increase given to other county employees.
