Gov. Nathan Deal's education reform and teacher pay in Atlanta

Appointees working on school funding recommendations for Gov. Nathan Deal's Education Reform Commission have given preliminary approval to a fundamentally new way of reimbursing school districts for teacher pay.

The new funding formula would encourage districts to abandon the teacher pay scale in place for decades. Officials say existing teachers would be grandfathered under the existing state pay scale and that only new teachers would be affected. But they acknowledge that nearly all local school districts would not have to honor that commitment.

That’s because all but two of Georgia’s 180 districts have become, or have applied to become, “flexibility” systems. Charter systems and Strategic Waivers systems can ignore the state requirement to pay all teachers, including current teachers, on the pay scale.

So what are metro Atlanta districts’ plans regarding teacher pay and grandfathering existing teachers? None clearly committed to preserving the pay scale for current teachers. Here’s what the press office for Atlanta Public Schools, which intends to become a charter system, says:

“Atlanta Public Schools is evaluating compensation models for teachers in the new operating model. We anticipate the decision being completed by next spring, in time for the 2016-2017 school year budgeting process.”

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