A bill that remains to be discussed in the Iowa Legislature is about public school teacher salaries.

Governor Reynolds wanted to make some changes to the teacher salaries by proposing to increase the starting pay to $50,000 and teachers that have at least 12 years of experience would have a salary of at least $62,500. Greene County School District Superintendent Brett Abbotts says following his recent visit to the House, the Education Committee has changed Reynolds’ proposal to $47,500 for first year teachers for next year, with the following year, increasing that to $50,000. The other portion of about $62,500 has been left off. 

Abbotts anticipates that if $47,500 for a starting salary is passed into law, that would impact about one-fourth of the staff at about $93,000-$100,000. 

“It still doesn’t make things as easy as it would seem in terms of creating some separation in between the steps and lanes that we have on our traditional salary schedule. So it’ll allow for some creativity and some solid collaboration with Greene County Education Association and I’m looking forward to that process.”   

Abbotts adds under the original proposal, about half of the teachers would be affected for an estimated total of $220,000.