The Board of Education will hold a work session from noon to 2 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29 to discuss details of the proposed new teacher compensation plan. The meeting will be in Room 706 at the administration building, 900 Grant St.

A bold new teacher compensation system for teachers in Denver Public Schools was unveiled in April 2003. Members of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) will vote on the proposal in March 2004. The proposed plan offers current teachers the opportunity to opt in to the new system at several points during their career. While new teachers would automatically be placed into the new system, current teachers can select when to join.

The new compensation system would reward teachers for improving student achievement, receiving successful performance evaluations, working in the most academically needy schools and improving their skills and knowledge. In the new system, teachers would exchange guaranteed annual increases based on experience for the opportunity to achieve higher salaries earlier in their career based on performance.

The draft recommendation was developed by the Denver Public Schools - Denver Classroom Teachers Association Joint Task Force on Teacher Compensation, a collaborative committee composed of 12 representatives from DPS, DCTA and the community. The group has been working since fall 2001 to craft the elements of a new professional compensation system for Denver’s 4,500 teachers.

The proposal features four distinctions from the current salary system:

1. Teachers who meet and exceed rigorous expectations in a fair system will have uncapped annual and career earnings.
2. The district will pay annual and sustained bonuses for demonstrated student growth. It would eliminate guaranteed increases for years of service.
3. Teachers can receive salary increases and bonuses for demonstrated acquisition of additional knowledge and skills related to student growth and their instructional discipline.
4. The district will offer incentives to teachers of demonstrated accomplishment who choose to work in schools and teaching assignments with high teacher turnover and a poor track record of student growth.

Under the current system, teachers are paid annual increases each year through the first 13 years of service, and then receive longevity increases after 15 years of service and after every five subsequent years of service. They also receive increases for completing 30 hours of graduate credit or advanced degrees, as well as hourly compensation for DPS professional development. Additional pay can be earned for taking on assignments such as coaching.

Information on the draft recommendation can be found at www.denverteachercompensation.org.

For more information, call the Public Information Office, 720-423-3414.