Educator Pay: Highest salaries are achieved through collective bargaining

Missouri NEA represents employees in 75 percent of the top 20 highest-paying districts.  

Missouri teacher salaries have been in the news the last few years for having some of the lowest salaries in the nation. Ranked 50th for beginning teacher salaries ($34,052, 2023 NEA Benchmarks report) and 47th for average teacher salaries ($46,944, 2023 NEA Rankings & Estimates), Missouri teachers are struggling to keep pace with the rest of the nation. 

However, the national rankings may not tell the whole story. Missouri has 518 school districts, and even though many of those districts are paying below-average wages, Missouri NEA is proving that collecting bargaining works. Evidence shows that many of the highest teachers' salaries in the state are those districts that negotiate salaries. 

MNEA has long been an advocate of collective bargaining, winning the 2007 court case, in which the Missouri Supreme Court confirmed that public employees have the right to "organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing" MNEA is the bargaining representative for many of the highest-paid teachers in the state, except for St. Louis and Kansas City, which AFT-Missouri represents. 

Missouri state law requires school districts to pay teachers a minimum salary of $25,000 and $33,000 for a full-time teacher who has a master’s degree with at least ten years of public teaching experience. (MO Statute 163.172 established July 1, 2006; state minimums instituted in 2009-10.)  As a comparison, the state minimum wage in Missouri as of Jan. 1, 2024, is $12.30 per hour (roughly $25,548 annually for a full-time employee). Missouri's standard minimum wage law does not apply to public employees. 

For the second year, the Missouri General Assembly approved a one-year Teacher Baseline Salary Grant to help school districts increase minimum teacher salaries up to $38,000. In some districts, every cell of the salary schedule that fell below $38,000, would essentially be paid the same amount for multiple years. Thus, if salaries on steps 1-7 (0-6 years of experience) were all below $38,000 on the salary schedule, they would all be paid $38,000 for six years without receiving a pay increase. 

This year, the Teacher Baseline Salary Grant stipulated that the school district increase its cost-share from 30% to 40%, and the state decreased funding by 10 percent from 70% to 60%. Thus, the cost of the grant would be shared by the state (60%) and school district (40%). For example, if a salary schedule had a cell that paid teachers $30,000, the following calculation would be used to supplement the salary schedule. (Difference: 38,000-30,000=$8,000  State Funding: 8,000 * .60= $4,800   District Cost: 8,000 * .40=$3,200)