I’m a teacher at Pioneer Valley Regional School. I drive 62 miles round trip every weekday, through the beautiful hills and valleys of western Massachusetts, to teach kind and thoughtful students in a beautifully kept school situated on nearly 100 acres of old farmland. I have done this for more than two decades. I’ll tell you, however, that I am an exception. Of the 32 educators currently employed at PVRS, there are only four of us that have remained here for more than 20 years.
We are finally emerging from the pandemic, yet an unnecessary crisis has remained in our district schools. The biggest threat to the long-term future of the PVRSD is the inability of our communities to attract and retain talented educators. The district has shrunk in size from five to three schools since 2019 and the last true contract agreement between the School Committee and the Teachers’ Association covered school years 2015-2018. A lot has changed since then, but unfortunately, teacher salaries in our district have not. The PVRSD is one of the lowest paying districts in the state.
Our kids only get one shot at their education and educator merit is the key to student achievement. We need to ensure that highly qualified educators will work and stay in our district. Over the last decade, we have averaged an annual turnover rate of 20-25% in our faculty. This impedes student achievement and it costs the district a great deal of money and time, unnecessarily spent posting and vetting applicants for open positions, interviewing, mentoring, training and replacing staff, year after year.
The situation is the same at the administrative level. We’ve had nine principals at PVRS and five superintendents in 20 years’ time. All of our district schools currently have interim, one-year principals that took some effort to find and hire. Essentially, no one stays around long enough for any ideas or initiatives to come to fruition or flourish. Teachers and students are weary of hearing the next big plans for the school year ahead, only to have the planners leave before any of those plans have a chance of being realized.
The members of the PVRSD School Committee have not been transparent about this personnel crisis or the damage that it has already done in our district. As the co-chair of the PVREA bargaining team, I can tell you that what the members of our union are being offered would make our bad situation even worse. It will not inspire our newer staff members to stick around, nor will it keep other area schools from poaching our veteran teachers. Our district offers no longevity payments for staff with 16 to 21 years of service, leaving anyone who will be at the top seniority step (36% of staff) penalized for their experience while getting the lowest salary increases in the faculty for those five years of their careers.
Only 12 of the PVRSD’s 83 teachers (14%) have been employed for 20 years or longer.
Eighty-six teachers have exited our school district in the last six years, very few due to retirement.
Nineteen of our 83 district teachers (24.4%) were hired this school year (2022-23).
Fifty-four percent (45/83) of currently employed teachers have less than five years’ of experience in our district.
It’s been a tough few years, and I have never seen my colleagues’ spirits so low. It is hard to invest in your students, and your work, when your employers won’t invest in you. What the School Committee is offering is not fair to our students nor their educators, and it’s not in the long-term interest of our communities. The laws of supply and demand don’t end at the schoolhouse doors and currently there are 285 districts in Massachusetts that pay more than the PVRSD. The ability to provide consistent, effective instruction while creating a secure, reliable team for students to learn from, is undermined by our towns collective unwillingness to provide equitable compensation for their teaching staff.
I felt compelled to explain that all is not well in PVRSD classrooms. You have exhausted, unappreciated and frustrated teachers that either see no way out, or do, and will take it. The most important thing that can be done to ensure the long-term success of our district schools and students is to settle a fair contract that will stop the hemorrhaging of experienced quality educators, and allow our communities to attract and retain new teachers of equal merit.
Tracy Derrig lives in Ashfield and is a teacher at Pioneer Valley Regional School, building representative and bargaining team co-chair for the PVREA/teachers’ union at PVRS.