Background: Performance Evaluations. Pursuant to legislation enacted in 2010, each school district must establish a four-tier rating system for evaluating classroom teachers and principals. The rating system must describe performance on a continuum that indicates the extent to which the criteria have been met or exceeded. When student growth data – showing a change in student achievement between two points in time – is available for principals and available and relevant to the teacher and subject matter, it must be based on multiple measures.

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), with stakeholders and experts, must create models for implementing the revised evaluation system criteria, student growth measurement tools, professional development programs, and evaluator training. Beginning in the 2010-11 school year, the OSPI must select school districts that have the agreement of the local associations representing teachers and principals to collaborate with the district, and will pilot the new teacher and principal evaluation systems. The new evaluation systems must be implemented in all school districts beginning in 2013-14.

Certificated Instructional Staff (CIS) Salaries. The Legislature allocates money to each district for state-funded employee salaries and associated fringe benefits. In the case of CIS – teachers, counselors, librarians, and other instructional staff requiring certification – the state funding is provided based on a state-salary allocation schedule. An individual’s education level and teaching experience determines the allocation for base salary. Additional funds (a 1-3 percent increase) are provided for each additional year of experience up to 16 years, and (a 3-20 percent increase) for additional credits of approved education acquired up to a Ph.D.

The state does not require school districts to pay CIS in accordance with the state-salary allocation schedule. However, most school districts have adopted a salary schedule the same as, or similar to, the state allocation schedule. Some of the state’s 295 school districts receive higher salary allocations for CIS, because of historical pay differences that are grandfathered in their allocations.

Compensation Working Group. Legislation enacted in 2009 (Chapter 548, Laws of 2009 or Engrossed Substitute House Bill 2261) revised the definition of the program of Basic Education and established new methods for distributing state funds to school districts to support this program of Basic Education. Various technical working groups were established to continue implementation of the legislation, including a Compensation Working Group. The group convenes beginning July 1, 2011, to recommend details of an educator salary allocation model, as well as an implementation schedule, and includes recommendations on a series of specific issues. The initial report to the Legislature is due June 30, 2012.

Summary of Bill: Compensation Working Group. Additional topics for the group to consider and include in its report to the Legislature are as follows: how a new compensation system should reward education, experience, performance-evaluation measures, high-demand fields, and National Board bonus certification; how to use school-based incentives to reward school-wide improvements; and ways to eliminate or phase out grandfathered salaries. Four legislators are added to the membership of the working group.

Reductions in Force. Certificated classroom teachers with the lowest evaluations must have contracts non-renewed first when reductions in the workforce occur due to enrollment decline or revenue loss. School district boards of directors must establish policies, and future collective bargaining agreements which are to reflect this requirement.

Staffing Placements. Assignments of certificated classroom teachers may not be made to schools in the lowest tier of the State Board of Education's accountability index unless agreed to.