Stivers serves as ‘principal for a day’ at WCHS; discusses possible teacher pay raises

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers got to be “principal for a day” at Whitley County High School Friday, and spent several hours talking with school administrators and others about various education-related issues, such as how to attract new teachers to the profession in Kentucky as surrounding states are raising starting pay for educators.

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers served as ‘principal for a day’ at Whitley County High School, Friday, and spent part of the day discussing a possible increase in starting pay for teachers. Also pictured are Kentucky Association of School Administrators Chief Executive Officer Dr. Rhonda Caldwell (left,) and WCHS Principal Julie Osborne (right).

“As I have said before, most of my group has been kind of characterized as anti-public education and that is totally untrue. We are looking for solutions and better public education,” Stivers said.

He added that many people are equating what the legislature is trying to do to remedy things with Louisville’s education system as something they are trying to apply statewide, which isn’t true.

“We have a very good rural type of school systems and I am out here today to visit with them to see,” Stivers said.

Whitley County Superintendent John Siler noted that it is getting more difficult each year to get good teachers, especially when some states bordering Kentucky are paying educators a few thousand dollars more that what Kentucky does.

“We are in a great spot with the University of the Cumberlands and the EKU (Eastern Kentucky University) branch in Corbin and Union College. They all have education programs. We are very fortunate here in the Tri-County area. I think you are seeing more struggle across the state in other areas. We have been fortunate. We have great partnerships with those colleges and universities,” he said adding that there are fields, such as high school and middle school science and math where finding teachers is getting more difficult.

“There are areas that we are looking at and getting creative. We are just lucky that our senator is willing to come and spend the day and discuss this with us,” Siler said.

Stivers said that legislators understand economic dynamics have changed over the last few years in education, and there is a need to create competitive salary schedules.

“We have to not just be competitive with districts in our state, but we have to be competitive with other states. There is quite an extensive discussion going on about how we modify the SEEK (Support Education Excellence in Kentucky) formula and other things that determine how teachers get paid in the state of Kentucky,” Stivers said.

The SEEK funding program is a formula driven allocation of state provided funds to local school districts. The formula includes funding for transportation costs and special needs students, according to the Kentucky Department of Education’s website.

Siler said that Friday’s visit was the first of what will hopefully be many conversations between legislators and local school officials about the issue of raising teacher salaries.

“We are pleased that the Kentucky Association of School Administrators and their Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Rhonda Caldwell, were with us today and that Senator Stivers took the time out of his schedule. It is an important conversation to have and we want to continue to be able to recruit and be able to retain excellent teachers here in Whitley County across our great state,” Siler said.

“Legislation and funding has to start somewhere. By Senator Stivers and other legislators participating in the principal for a day, they see the leadership and all of the great things happening in schools. It also allows them to see the challenges that our school districts are facing and what they can do with a funding mechanism to help us overcome those, and continue to have great teachers in place,” Siler added.

“Any superintendent across the state will tell you that to have a great school district, you have to have great teachers. Salaries and wages do play a big part in recruiting and attracting those people to that field of teaching. It is very important that we have these discussions about funding teacher pay and increasing those salaries.”