Really? Funny, when I taught they had these steps as well…but I never received any step. Every year it was ‘frozen’.
You sure those teachers are getting their steps? EVERY year??
Are these steps above inflation or do they not include a COLA normally as well? In other words…does a 12 year teacher who STARTED in your district make more (AFTER adjusting for inflation) then when he started?
Sounds like your district needs to close its schools. Merge with a neighbor or something.
Maybe I came off wrong in the previous post. I constantly look at new opportunities…and was recently invited for interviews at a place that will pay me a good 40% more (though that is a promotion in terms of responsibilities). So, teachers are not alone here…if a teacher teachers for 10 years at a school and only gets 2 steps…he has to move to a new school to get full credit for his experience. Same thing I guess.
The low salary and no increase in salary for 5 years drove me from teaching…but I still remember the pain of finding out new hires with less experience were paid more than me because they received a step for every year of experience they had where I received none. That’s what provoked my reply…your ‘steps’ 
Yeah - the funny part is that we just went through a forced consolidation 3 years ago. We used to be in a three-town district (about 500 kids) - now we’re in the “big” 8-town district. And it has saved money - no doubt - the main reason we have not had to have cuts in the past two years is from the savings from consolidation. The down side is that we are with completely incompatible towns - demographically and geographically (there are actually towns in between the towns in our district.). Consolidation was a great idea that was executed poorly in our case.
Amen. You go into these professions expecting modest but sufficient wages. You don’t go into it expecting to justify and fight for modest but sufficient wages.
If I were a conservative I would focus a lot more on undercutting seniority and tenure and replacing it with more performance pay.
How do you do that with unions firmly in place? Seniority is the holy grail. The new teachers (or state workers) always lose.