New teachers are leaving Hartford schools at an alarming pace, with one out of every four new teachers moving on

New teachers are leaving Hartford Public Schools at an alarming pace, with one out of every four teachers moving on after their first year on the job.

The problem of teacher turnover has been felt the most acutely in some of the city’s lowest-performing schools. The loss of more than 20 percent of their teaching staff has created a “perpetual churn” that hurts the district’s efforts to recover from the COVID-19 health crisis, Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez said.

In an effort to curb the turnover, Hartford Public Schools are considering raising pay for some teachers and making other changes.

The district has started exploring using some of its federal pandemic relief to address the issues they often hear from teachers, such as the district’s low pay compared to neighboring school systems and insufficient time, professional support and mental health support for educators.

The discussion of potential raises for some teachers was in its early stages, and on Thursday night, a district spokesman reported that the talks have been tabled until early next year because the district is also negotiating new three-year contracts with the Hartford Federation of Teachers and several other labor unions.

In an Oct. 3 presentation to the school board, district leaders discussed several avenues for increasing some teachers’ compensation, from giving stipends to teachers at certain schools or in certain subjects to increasing pay for “teacher leaders,” who carry a heavier workload.

Torres-Rodriguez posited that the district could spend about $19.5 million on the effort through 2023-2024, or about 15% of the $127 million the district is slated to receive in COVID-19 relief.

School systems may use the federal funds to pay stipends, bonuses or salaries for teachers as long as they can connect the compensation to issues resulting from COVID-19 — such as lost ground in academics, attendance and student well-being.

However, districts are cautioned against using COVID-19 relief to raise salaries to levels they won’t be able to sustain when the funding runs out in 2024.

The pandemic’s impacts in Hartford are clear. District students who live in Hartford — as opposed to suburban students attending magnet schools — missed an average of one in five days of school during the fall of 2020, and end-of-year test scores fell sharply among all students in spring 2021.

Which salaries to raise?

Over the next three years, Hartford schools aim to dramatically increase academic performance beyond pre-pandemic levels, including seeing half of students proficient in grade-level reading and writing, up from 16% of those tested last spring.

To meet those goals, the district must grow and retain a diverse and effective teacher workforce, “and in a way that can be sustained long term,” Torres-Rodriguez said. In her presentation to the school board, Torres-Rodriguez said the district will need to cut some costs if it makes new investments.

She presented the board with several possibilities.

For about $6.5 million per year, the district could raise the salaries of all teachers with six or more years of experience, closing Hartford’s pay gap with neighboring districts. Teachers would receive raises ranging from $243 to $5,200 a year.

This plan has several drawbacks, according to the presentation. Only 20% of outgoing teachers who took exit surveys said salary was their primary reason for leaving Hartford, and turnover is lowest among teachers with six or more years of experience.

The schools with the highest needs also have the fewest teachers with at least six years of experience.

For the same investment of about $6.5 million per year, the district could give larger raises, $5,000 to $10,200, to about half of its educators, including nearly 200 “teacher leaders” and positions identified as the hardest to staff.

Those positions would include jobs at schools with the highest vacancies and the fewest candidates, and in certain subject areas, such as secondary math, special education and teaching English as a foreign language.

Under this plan, the district would also have enough money to pay teachers at the highest-need schools to work an extended day, giving them more time for much-sought planning and team collaboration.

Making up the difference

To generate some cost savings, the district could deny pay step increases to teachers who are rated below “proficient” on their evaluations.

Hartford schools would also create an “associate teacher” program, hiring new teachers at a lower salary and a smaller workload and pairing them with teacher leaders, who would gain a helping hand and more time for their responsibilities outside of the classroom.

The district sought feedback on the ideas from a small group of seven teachers and seven other district leaders and staff, but it didn’t reach a consensus on any plan. The group had mixed and negative feelings about any change that added to teachers’ workloads or created disparities in pay across schools and subjects.

Board vice chair Shonta Browdy questioned why the conversation had not started with the Hartford Federation of Teachers, as the labor union negotiates pay for all teachers. She also argued that the group of 14 teachers and staff who reviewed the ideas was too small to draw conclusions from.

“I just have a problem with that. We’re putting a lot of weight, in my opinion, on not a lot of feedback,” Browdy said.

District leaders will continue working with the board to develop a proposal.

Second-vice chair Kim Oliver, director of Hartford’s Department of Children, Families and Recreation, requested more information for the continuing conversation, including how many teachers are currently rated “proficient” or above and what reasons first-year teachers have given for leaving.

Meanwhile, board member A.J. Johnson, pastor at Urban Hope Refuge Church, sought information about the district’s plans to support teachers’ mental health and well-being.

“I’ve had teachers reach out to me and (they’re) asked to go the extra mile as it pertains to their job when they’re already going 8,000 miles due to shortages, due to the insane amount of initiatives that we keep asking them to perform and do,” Johnson said. “… Some of these things are toxic.”

Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.