Creighton files sweeping “teacher pay” bill and schedules hearing with less than 48 hours’ notice to the public

Sen. Brandon Creighton (R–Conroe) filed the Senate’s “teacher pay” bill Tuesday afternoon and immediately scheduled a hearing on the bill with less than 48 hours’ notice. Creighton is chair of the Senate Education K-16 Committee. 

Senate Bill (SB) 26 seeks to impact the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA), teacher evaluations, school district compensation policies/performance pay, and educator liability insurance; offer potentially limited-time pay increases styled as a Teacher Retention Allotment (TRA); and repeal automatic pay increases driven by the Basic Allotment. 

Let’s take a look at the headline provision of the bill first: the pay raise portion or “Teacher Retention Allotment.” The TRA provides districts money for teacher pay increases for the next two years based on the size of the district’s student population and experience of the teacher.  

In districts with 5,000 students or fewer, the bill would add an allotment providing an additional $5,000 for teachers with three to five years of experience and $10,000 for those with five or more years of experience.  

In districts of more than 5,000 students, SB 26 would provide teachers with three to five years of experience an additional $2,500 and those with five or more years of experience an additional $5,000.  

There are two primary differences between the proposed new TRA and prior pay raises: 

• First, the TRA would apply ONLY to classroom teachers; it does not apply to everyone subject to the minimum salary schedule and certainly not to all non-administrative staff. There is no new money in SB 26 or any other Senate bill for pay raises for any public school employees other than classroom teachers.  
• Second, prior pay raises were more or less permanent. To undo the raise, the Legislature was required to file a new bill removing the pay raise language from statute. Not so with the TRA. The TRA does not directly require districts to give teachers a raise; rather, it gives districts money they can only spend on teacher raises. This is an important distinction. Normally, the Legislature increases formula funding (such as the Basic Allotment) and requires districts to spend part of that money on raises. To undo that type of increase, the Legislature would have to pass a bill specifically repealing the required raise. With the TRA, a future Legislature could simply not appropriate money for the TRA in the budget bill, and the raise would go away without any change to statue. This is a common occurrence with grants and allotments. This would place districts in a terrible situation with their teachers. In order to pass a balanced budget, the district would either have to lay off enough teachers to maintain the same level of pay for the remaining teachers, or it would have to take back everyone's raises to avoid layoffs. The only other option would be adopting a huge deficit budget to delay firing people or cutting pay—hardly a sustainable course of action. None of these are good options for the district or educators.  

Ostensibly because the Senate wants to shift to an RTA-based system, the bill repeals the automatic pay raise language placed into law as part of 2019’s House Bill (HB) 3. Under that provision, state law currently requires that 30% of any overall increase in school funding be spent on increasing teacher compensation any time the Legislature increases the Basic Allotment. The current law has the benefit of automatically increasing teacher pay most any time the Legislature increases the school funding formulas without having to haggle over a separate pay raise provision. Additionally, the HB 3 provision from 2019 covers all non-administrative staff. There are currently proposals in the House to increase the HB 3-era percentage from 30% to 50%.  

Impact on the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) 

Beyond creating the TRA, Senate Bill (SB) 26 would expand performance pay programs, most specifically TIA. SB 26 would introduce a new bottom rung of TIA designations, "acknowledged" and “national board certified,” to the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA). The bill is silent on how many teachers could be designated as acknowledged; there are statutory limits on how many teachers may be designated as recognized, exemplary or master under the current system. The new acknowledged designation would become the entry-level designation in terms of the associated stipend, which would start at $3,000. Stipends on the existing  designations would move up, capping off at $12,000 to $36,000 for master designees, a designation capped by statute at no more than 5% of teachers. Currently fewer than 5% of teachers hold any TIA designation. In addition to district-assigned designations, teachers with National Board Certification would continue to be designated at the lowest tier. 

The bill would require the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to assist districts and campuses in setting up TIA programs, including providing models for local optional designation systems and establishing partnerships between districts interested in TIA and those that have already implemented the program. The bill would provide grant funding to assist this work. In addition to expanding the existing TIA designations, SB 26 would create “enhanced TIA districts.” The bill would offer a 10% bonus in TIA funding to enhanced TIA schools, districts, or charters that goes directly to the district or charter, not to educators. Participating schools would be required to put comprehensive school evaluation and support systems in place that put all instructional staff on a performance-based compensation program, include implementing a strategic evaluations system aligned with TIA and ensuring "substantially all" classroom teachers are eligible to earn TIA designations. This would be challenging for educators of non-STAAR tested subjects due to requirements related to collection of student performance data. Participating districts or campuses would be prohibited from implementing across-the-board raises for employees except in the case of "significant" inflation. 

Additional provisions related to teacher pay and liability insurance  

Outside of provisions related to teacher pay, the bill would make the children of classroom teachers eligible to participate in district prekindergarten programs, something many districts already offer teachers as an employee benefit—so many, in fact, that TEA already even lists it as a common benefit for teachers on the agency's website.  

The bill would also order TEA to contract with a third-party vendor to provide optional liability insurance to teachers. The bill would not prohibit the vendor from charging for this service, and ATPE has confirmed the intention is that teachers would be charged for this optional insurance program. The bill is silent on the level of coverage, but it seems fairly clear it would be liability only and not include legal services such as employment protection or grievance assistance, particularly since TEA/SBEC itself is often the opposing party in those actions. In a clear swipe to organizations such as ATPE that provide both insurance and legal protection as well as advocacy on behalf of our members, SB 26 would prohibit the state vendor from lobbying for teachers, engaging in political activities, or advocating for public schools.  

Nearly simultaneous with the text of SB 26 being made available to the public, Creighton posted notice that the Senate Education K-16 Committee would hold a public hearing on the bill at 11 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 20—leaving educators and members of the public less than 48 hours to read and digest the bill and make plans to come to Austin to register their positions.