Two West Central Illinois school districts are on a new list being released by the website Reboot Illinois focusing on teacher salaries.
Virginia School District is ranked as the 25th-worst district for salaries, while North Greene is ranked the fifteenth-worst. Reboot Illinois indicates it used teacher salary data from the Illinois State Board of Education to compile a Top 25 and Worst 25 salary list.
Virginia teachers with a bachelor’s degree earn just under $30,000, while those with a master’s degree earn about $32,800, according to the report.
Superintendent Brent O’Daniell says the fiscal situation of public education in the state is not good.
“The salary schedule that they’re using simply reflects what is in that schedule for teachers, it doesn’t also include some of the benefits that are available to teachers, and with North Greene, one of the benefits we have that most districts don’t is that we pay 100 percent of their health insurance premium,” explains Coultas.
“And paying 100 percent of their health care premium is a benefit that actually makes our starting salary look better.”
North Green educators earn about $29,200, while those with master’s degrees earn around $31,000. Superintendent Lawrence Coultas offers his thoughts on the numbers.
“When you combine that with a school district with an assessed valuation of other $40 million, there are not a lot of local funds available to make up for the lack of state money that’s available in these trying times,” says O’Daniell.
“Some school districts have the opportunity to go to industry and pick up some money that way, but we don’t have any major industry in our school district, so we have to find other ways to try to lure teachers and keep teachers in a smaller district. We cover over 170 square miles, but it’s a lot of farm land, so we don’t have a lot of students in the district,” he continues.
Enrollments for the two districts are much lower than the ones at schools that are on the Top 25 highest salaries, according to the report.
To view the full list, click here.