$1.5 million from legislature goes to enhance teacher salaries – Cache Valley Daily

Photo courtesy of Utah State University’s Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services.

Select Utah teachers could receive salaries of $100,000 a year thanks to Senate Bill 173 which passed both the House and Senate in the recent legislative session. It is the legislature’s effort to keep the best teachers in Utah schools.

One-time funding of $1.5 million goes to the Center for the School of the Future (CSF) at Utah State University and will be used to help local education agencies, or LEAs, determine the teachers who will receive substantial salary supplements.

CSF is an innovation-driven center housed in USU’s Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Humans Services. CSF is responsible to apply the new policy and salary supplements will run between $10,000 and $20,000.

CSF Executive Director Parker Dawson said a top performing teacher in a school on the east side of Salt Lake could get up to $10,000 and if an awarded teacher is in a high-poverty school the amount would be doubled.

The Utah State Board of Education will distribute the funding after CSF builds the processes to guide the local education agencies in collecting data on the teachers they want to move forward.

The legislature also earmarked another $200,000 for the CSF’s Teacher Academy Schools which provide students another 100 hours of experience over three semesters, all before their student teaching.