Best HR Practices
for Charter Schools
Use your HR policies, structure, and compensation
to incentivize the behavior you want from your employees.
Districts have reasons
for their policies. Do you?
• Your reasons won’t be the same. Are your policies and practices?
• Do your HR practices exist just because the district has them? Just because
another charter has them? Because a management company does?
What we’ll cover
• Employee compensation (averages, salary schedules, bonuses, agreements)
• Benefits (medical, retirement, paid leave)
• Evaluations
• Disciplining and terminating employees
Workplace culture
• Good pay, policies, practices, forms, handbooks, and such are important
• But the best thing you can do for your employees is to create a positive
workplace culture at the school
• Focus on
•
•
•
•
Quality Leadership
Incentives for performance
Professional development
Opportunities for growth
Employee Compensation
Pay, benefits, bonuses
Set up your school’s compensation
to get the behavior you want to see
Compensation Principles
• Principle 1: You hire and pay teachers for the benefit of the school and the
students, not for the sake of the teachers.
• Principle 2: The structure of your compensation should provide incentives
for quality instruction and continuous improvement.
• Principle 3: You should pay employees well when they work, and not pay
them when they don’t.
• Principle 4: We should put as much into compensation as it takes to find and
keep quality employees, and no more
Charter school averages*
• Median Teacher Salary: $37,583
• Non-High School Median: $36,747
• High School Median: $39,672
• www.primaryschoolteachersalary.com
* For schools that are CHARTER SOLUTIONS clients
for fiscal year 2015
Salary schedule
• Why do Salary Schedules exist in education?
• Should they exist at your school? Why?
• What actions do you want to reward?
• What should your salary schedule look like?
Charter Academy Teacher Salary Schedule
$
Pct Increase Yrs
Base
0%
1
105%
2
110%
3
114%
4
118%
5-8
130%
9-12
140%
13-16
150%
17-20
160%
20+
Notes:
4,200.00 Legislative Funding
Bachelor's Degree
LOW
$
29,000
$
33,200
$
34,650
$
36,100
$
37,260
$
38,420
$
41,900
$
44,800
$
47,700
$
50,600
HIGH
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
31,900
36,100
38,304
39,928
41,227
42,526
46,424
49,672
52,920
56,168
Master's Degree
LOW
$
31,900
$
36,100
$
37,695
$
39,290
$
40,566
$
41,842
$
45,670
$
48,860
$
52,050
$
55,240
HIGH
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
35,090
39,290
41,714
43,501
44,930
46,359
50,646
54,219
57,792
61,365
Doctorate Degree
LOW
$
35,090
$
39,290
$
41,045
$
42,799
$
44,203
$
45,606
$
49,817
$
53,326
$
56,835
$
60,344
HIGH
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
38,599
42,799
44,729
46,659
48,203
51,403
56,203
60,204
64,204
68,204
Teachers with additional assignments or responsibility are eligible to receive negotiated stipends in addition to regular
salary.
Actual salary within the range will be determined by performance evaluations, licensure level, relevance of experience,
progress to higher degrees wth demonstrated classroom effect, Charter Academy Certification status, and other
factors.
Director compensation
• Charter school director salaries in Utah*
•
•
•
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Median: $87,321
Mean: $88,000
High: $126,979
Low: $46,670
Average salary per student: $157
• What factors go into director salaries?
•
•
School size, grades taught, other administrators
Again, what outcomes should your compensation structure reward?
*Based on schools that reported salaries to state transparency website for
FY2014.
Compensation Agreements
• Why do districts use contracts for teachers?
• Why should you? (You shouldn’t if you want to protect at-will status.)
• Why should you have a written agreement regarding employment or
compensation?
• What should they contain?
•
Several samples are available online at www.utahcharters.org
Bonuses and extra pay
• What behaviors do you want to incentivize?
• What behaviors do school districts incentivize?
• A sample Performance Pay Plan to incentivize growth and excellence in four
areas
What are employee benefits?
•
•
They are part of employee compensation
Reductions in benefits don’t necessarily mean reductions in
compensation
•
•
•
What you save in benefits, you can put in salary, different benefit programs, or
classroom supplies
Like all compensation, they are designed to provide incentive for
quality people to work for your school
While employees benefit from good compensation, be sure to keep the
goal in mind: We give good benefits because it keeps good employees
at our school, not because it is good for employees
The incentives in your benefit structure
• How your school pays for its portion of benefit premiums will
affect the choices your employees make about coverage options
and usage, which in turn affects the cost of the premiums
• It is inefficient (creates the wrong incentives) to pay for benefits
that aren’t used, or to pay more than the benefits received
• The goal should be to design the plan to create the incentives
for the behavior you want to see (stay with the school, be wise
about spending school resources)
• Incentives typically come into play when employees have
options (more than one plan to choose from)
Common Designs
• School pays 100 percent of premium for an individual;
employee pays premium for additional parties
• School pays a percentage of the total premium;
employee pays the remaining premium
• School pays a fixed dollar amount; employee either pays
the difference or finds other benefits to use
• Pay a fixed percentage (up to 100) of a specific plan;
employees who upgrade pay the additional cost
Using benefit dollars efficiently
• It doesn’t make sense to pay extra for benefits that your
employees aren’t using
•
•
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Do you know what benefits your employees use?
Do they max out on prescription deductibles but never reach their
medical deductible?
If you can get this information from your broker, use it when designing
plans
• If you can reduce premiums (usually a savings for the school and
your employees) by changing rarely-used benefits, you’ll get a
lot of bang for your buck
Placing cost with use
• The most effective incentives (for controlling cost) are those
that place the cost of benefits and services with their usage
• It will cost the school and most employees more money to
provide rich benefits that are used by only a few
•
•
This encourages the use of such benefits by employees who might
not use them otherwise, because they are paying for it anyway
This in turn drives up premiums for all (employees and schools)
Placing cost with use, continued
•
•
•
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Consider increasing deductibles, so those who use insurance and medicine
a lot have incentive to spend carefully, and so their use doesn’t drive up
premiums for all
Increasing co-pays (at the expense of raising premiums) has the same
effect
Consider passing more of the cost for specialized procedures and
prescriptions to employees, to incentivize their careful use
Sign up for new “Virtual Doctor Visit” options offered by your carrier
Other benefits that might save money
• Consider paying for short- or long-term disability, rather than
a generous paid leave plan
• Flexible Spending or Health Retirement Account
contributions
•
When paired with higher-deductible plans, employees are covered
and both schools and employees get to keep more cash
Retirement Benefits
• Two basic kinds
• Defined Benefit Plans: “Guaranteed” to provide a fixed retirement income
for life
• Defined Contribution Plans: Employees put in (often matched by employer)
each pay period and the actual benefit depends on how well investments do
over time
Retirement benefits, cont.
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•
•
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State Retirement has moved from a Defined Benefit to a Defined Contribution
Plan, but if you choose it, employees who were in during the former rules still are
governed by them
State Retirement is a one-time choice, and once you join you lose all flexibility over
your own retirement benefit.
About half of what you pay into URS will go to your current employees.
For a lengthy essay on the problems with State Retirement as your benefit plan,
see: http://charterscool.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-charters-should-opt-out-ofutah.html
Retirement benefits, cont.
• For your own retirement contributions, you should work to get the best
value for the money
• Consider a generous “match” of employee contributions, rather than a flat
contribution for all (target your benefit dollars to those who value the
benefit)
• If you choose a retirement plan with a private investment firm, it will likely
also come with a professional advisor for both the school and employees—a
very nice benefit indeed
Leave Policies
• Districts typically offer 10 to 12 days per year of paid leave that can be
banked over time to very high levels
• Charters typically offer 7 or so days per year of paid leave that carry forward
at much lower levels
• What do you plan to offer? Why?
• Does it match the district? For administrators? Why?
Thing to consider in leave policies
• What behavior do you want to reward? Discourage?
• Teachers have 180 scheduled days off per year
• School employees get exposed to a lot of germs
• School-year vs. Calendar-year employees
• What special circumstances might be exceptions?
Compensation in Summary
• Compensation is probably 50 to 60 percent of your budget, and is
also the most important part; schools need to compensate to keep
quality employees, but do so wisely and efficiently
• By eliminating potential excess or changing structure with poor
incentives, schools can save money while still offering competitive
and functional benefit programs
• Consider ways to place more cost with usage and supplement with
more flexible benefit offerings
Teacher Evaluations
Before you can do a evaluation, you need a good evaluation system in place
Evaluation Principles
• All teachers (and other employees) crave feedback and should be regularly
evaluated
• Evaluations must be based on measurable and credible data from multiple
sources
• Data must be on criteria known in advance to the evaluator and the
evaluated
• Criteria should be consistent with the school’s mission and priorities
Evaluation System
• There are several ways to do this effectively
• Think what you want to incentivize
•
•
•
How do you measure that? What will you see if the behavior you want is present?
What will you need to observe or collect?
What will that require of you and the teacher?
• A good place to start is the Performance Pay Plan distributed earlier
Some cautions on evaluations
• Don’t overextend yourself. The worst you can do is tell teachers you’ll
observe them and then don’t.
• Don’t just make the evaluation a checklist of the job description
• Don’t just make it about “tasks” that you can measure easily. A lot of what a
teacher does takes time to measure.
Some tips to make them credible to teachers
• Focus on the most important parts of your mission
• Use multiple evaluators, multiple evaluations, and data from multiple
sources over time
• Include aspects that are specific to individual teachers targeted to their
professional development and growth goals
• Complete it early enough that if it doesn’t go well, teachers can look for
other options—and you can, too
Employee discipline and termination
This is the worst, but most important part
Hard to do, but if you don’t to it, you’ll get sued
Employee discipline and termination
principles
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•
•
•
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At-Will employment empowers both the employer and the employee with a fullrange of options
Being open and honest with employees is better than not
Your goal should be to improve the quality of instruction and performance in your
school
Principle 3 from the beginning—Pay people well when they work, but don’t pay
them when they don’t.
It is possible to be a very good teacher and a very bad employee
Employment law favors employees almost exclusively; to protect the school from
potential liability, be careful in how you discipline and terminate
Openness and Honesty
• Again, think about the behavior you want to incentivize. How you handle
people on the way out has a huge impact on the ones that stay.
• To promote teacher honesty and openness with you, be open and honest
with them
• The termination conversation shouldn’t be a surprise (if termination
decisions come out of the blue, no one at the school will feel secure in their
job)
• Pay teachers for what they’ve worked and don’t screw them on benefits
(they won’t tell you they’re leaving if your practices make it better for them
to hide it).
Protect your at-will status
•
•
Even perfect policies will not protect you from poor practices or procedures.
To terminate employment without liability, you’ll need to show that the employee:
•
•
•
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Did something bad enough to warrant termination (Severity)
Knew the action could result in termination (Knowledge)
Was completely responsible for the action (Culpability)
It is easier to terminate for violating policy or breaking rules, and very hard to
terminate for poor performance.
Severity
• This can be very subjective. What’s a big deal to you might not seem like a
big deal to a judge.
• Schools are often hurt here by reluctance to take action mid-year. You’ll lose
claims if you wait until June to end employment and cite actions from
February.
• The severity of behavior must be the same for all employees. You can’t
terminate one teacher for being late if you allow other late teachers to
remain. (See, being late isn’t really that big of a deal, or they’d all be let go.)
Knowledge
• Employees must know that their actions could lead to their termination.
• The only thing that will save you here is clear documentation that includes
the warning of potential termination.
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•
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Need more than a sentence in the employee handbook
Specific actions, tied to a specific consequence for a specific individual
Need employees’ signature (or of a witness) to show knowledge
Culpability
• Only actions that are completely within employee’s control are valid reasons
for termination.
• That can make it hard to terminate teachers
•
•
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Is student behavior within teachers’ control?
What about student achievement?
Any action regarding employee discipline should focus exclusively on the employee’s
behavior. “Ms. Teacher failed to correct misbehavior according to policy” instead of
“Her students are constantly noisy in class.”
What the DWS recommends
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Screen applicants to be sure they are properly suited for the work.
Have clear written policy and rules concerning employee conduct at
work.
Monitor new employees' progress carefully, especially during their
probationary period. An employer will be liable for benefit costs of
an employee who was separated because he was unable to
perform the necessary work and meet minimum job performance
standards. (See, it’s not their fault they can’t do the work, it’s your
fault for hiring an unqualified or incompetent person.)
Keep accurate records of attendance, tardiness and all warnings
given. This is progressive discipline.
Do not condone violations of rules. Be consistent in taking
disciplinary actions against employees who violate your work rules.
Be specific in providing separation explanations.
Documentation
• Any time you talk about an action that, if continued, could lead to formal
action or discipline, formalize it.
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•
•
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Develop a standard form, if you haven’t already
Be specific. Cite specific examples of a specific employee’s specific behavior that
violate specific policy and has specific, negative consequences for the school.
Reestablish the standard and get commitment from employee to meet it completely.
Name specific consequences, up to and including termination of employment.
Examples
• From DWS:
•
“Employee was absent on May 2 and May 3, and did not call in, and was aware of
company policy on reporting time off. By his failing to report for work we were left
shorthanded and had to find additional help to meet our production goals on those
days," rather than merely reporting "absenteeism." Make sure you put down all the
facts.
Another example
• A teacher was driving students home in violation of policy (and creating an
unacceptable liability risk for the school)
• The principal provided a written warning that the teacher was not to drive
students home any more
• When the teacher did it again, the principal terminated employment
because the teacher disobeyed a direct order, NOT because she drove a
student home.
My example
Description of Infraction:
Over the course of the last three days, Mr. Teacher has made inappropriate physical contact with
students and has used inappropriate language in violation of school policy. (See section 5.2a of
Employee Handbook and Mr. Teacher’s signed acknowledgement of receipt.) On 10/17 He pulled one
student out of class by the ear; On 10/18 he poked another student in the chest; He also used
profanity audible to students in class. Such behavior interferes with the learning process and
undermines parent and student confidence in Charter Academy.
Plan for Improvement:
Mr. Teacher will:
•
•
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Refrain from using physical contact when disciplining students or managing behavior
Refrain from using profanity in students’ presence
While at school or school sponsored events, treat all students consistently and professionally.
Consequences of Further Incidents:
Further incidents of this kind may result in any or all of the following:
•
•
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Unpaid suspension from work
Change in assignment
Other disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment
Language—how it can hurt
•
Be careful that the language you use (in conversation or in writing) does not open
you to claims or liability
•
•
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Never create an expectation of continued employment (“Next year we expect your
performance to improve.”)
Never apologize or make excuses (“I’m sorry this isn’t working out.” or “Although her
students are difficult to manage because of behavioral disabilities, her performance still
needs to improve.”)
Focus on the specific behavior, not reasons for it. You need to show Severity—damage to
the school—and whether someone is always late because they are lazy, have a drinking
problem, or an ailing mother, the effect on the school is the same.
Language—how it can help
• Language in early documentation can help show employee responsibility
and ease the difficulty of the situation. Some suggestions:
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“This is now your chance to show how well you can handle situations like this.”
“I’ve written all this down so we can all be sure that there is no misunderstanding. Here
you know exactly what the school expects of you, and this is an opportunity for you to
rise to the occasion.”
“We need to see some changes in your classroom. This is your chance to make those
changes. If you aren’t able to make those changes, then the school will need to make a
change.”
To protect the school from paying people for
not working, you should have
• Solid written employment policies and a solid employee handbook
• A trail of documentation that shows an employee knew that the bad thing
she did could result in termination
• Consistency in how you treat employees and infractions
• Language that protects the school
• A positive culture and an open and honest approach that discourages
lawsuits
Resources to help
• Check with your ESP, if you use one
• UAPCS has a database of good forms, policies, handbooks, and examples
• Call UAPCS mentors for help and advice
• Good brokers for employee benefits and school liability insurance
• Division of Risk Management has staff to help with HR issues and a good
handbook
Questions?
Lincoln Fillmore
801-548-0144
lincoln@chartersolutions.org