Parents warn children against talking salary, religion, past romances, or politics with others. These can be sensitive and private matters. Yet, with an easily accessible online database, all CHS students can find their teachers’ salaries. Missouri educators’ salaries were published on STLtoday.com last month.

The online database includes the salaries for administrators, principals, teachers and guidance counselors.  Community members can search by last name, school district, position and salary range.

“We Americans love numbers and statistics,” CHS History teacher Richard Horas said. “We feel that if we can only come up with the correct formula, we can evaluate almost anything

History teacher Rick Kordenbrock was not startled by the creation of this database.

“I was not surprised by the posting of the salaries,” Kordenbrock said. “I have seen salaries for other public employees posted online.”

In fact, this website already posts the public employee salaries of Missouri state employees, University of Missouri System employees, St. Louis city and county employees and Illinois state employees. This time the site decided to post every public school teacher salary from the 2008-2009 school year.

Teachers like Horas were taken aback that the St. Louis Post Dispatch posted the salaries online at such open access.

“I was surprised,” Horas said. “However, as a public servant and an advocate of government transparency, I believe the public has a right to know what they are paying their employees.”

Some CHS students were shocked to find such detailed information on the website.

“It seems like an invasion of privacy,” sophomore Marguerite Daw said. “They could have created this database without employee names and included a pay salary chart for each school district.”

This online database showcases the differences between merit pay and seniority pay. Clayton builds salaries through seniority and education while Ladue uses merit pay.

“It’s not just a seniority pay system,” said Sharmon Wilkinson, Clayton Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources. “We pay teachers using a single salary schedule model. Pay is based upon two factors, years of experience and education. Teachers will receive higher salaries for Bachelor’s Degrees, Master’s Degree and for a PhD.”

Since the single schedule model is objective, it is used by many school districts.

“The single salary schedule model in most school districts has been used since the early 1930s,” Wilkinson said. “Part of the reason the model was put into place was so salaries were objective and never based upon individual discretion.  Historically, the model emerged in response to a movement for ‘equal pay for equal work,’ a demand for greater teacher skills and the desire to diminish bias in the teacher pay system.”

While the Clayton school district determines salaries using a single schedule model, the Ladue school district prefers the merit pay system. Ladue is the only school district in the St. Louis area to utilize this unique system.

“Ladue has had a merit pay-based system since 1954,” President of the Ladue School District Karen Webster said. “A committee of teachers and administrators started work in 1952 to devise a system that would set pay increases for teachers based on their individual evaluations.  The possibility of earning more money for superior performance and having no salary cap allows for each teacher to be rewarded for his or her efforts as an individual.”

In the Ladue School District, pay is based off of yearly evaluations and discussions between teachers and the administrators.

“Each teacher has an evaluator, most often the principal, but at the middle or high school level it could be an assistant principal, who works with the teacher to set goals,” Webster said. “This occurs every year for non-permanent teachers, or every other year for permanent teachers.  Based on these evaluations and criteria described in the ‘Teacher Evaluation Program Handbook’, the teacher is placed in a category. Money available for increases in salary will be distributed to the teachers.  A portion of that money is distributed so that teachers who place in a higher category will receive more money, independent of how long they have been teaching, in Ladue, or elsewhere.”

CHS teachers like Horas believe there are benefits to the merit system, but feel it is extremely difficult to manage.

“I believe merit pay has a place in education,” Horas said. “The challenge is coming up with a means by which to determine ‘merit’. So much of what teachers do is tough to ‘measure’. Can you imagine trying to come up with a ‘merit’ system for evaluating your parents’ performance?”

Kordenbrock believes there are some school districts that would benefit from merit pay.

“In some districts, other than Clayton, there are situations where teachers have tenure, and then have no incentive to work hard,” Kordenbrock said. “Teachers can become stagnant, and merit pay could be a form of motivation.”

Although the single salary schedule does not pay all teachers the same amount, differences in salaries are solely due to educational levels, credits earned and experience.

“The compensation system was so named because all teachers were paid on the same scale, regardless of gender, race, grade level or family status of the teacher,” Wilkinson said. “The model does not take into consideration any evaluation of the teacher’s professional performance. To have merit pay, a good system is needed for determining salary decisions. How do you determine the quality of a teacher’s performance? Fairness is always an issue.”

While some CHS teachers question the reliability of the merit system, the Ladue School District believes it offers many more benefits.

“Every year offers the opportunity for an individual teacher to have his or her salary increased based on his or her contributions- to the classroom, to fellow teachers, to his or her school and the district at large,” Webster said. “This allows Ladue to differentiate pay increases for additional teacher effort, as opposed to paying the same for everyone who has completed the same number of years at a given educational level, regardless of how much they contributed that year.”

When analyzing the database, a few CHS students were surprised at the varying differences in teacher salaries.

“From searching the database I noticed there is such a difference in teacher salaries,” senior Melissa Kopp said. “If you work longer, it definitely doesn’t mean you are a better teacher. For example, Mr. Kordenbrock is a great teacher with only two years of experience, but he deserves a much higher salary. Merit pay definitely seems like a better system.”

When viewing the database, many of the extra benefits are not included in the listed salary. The real salary can be significantly more than that published online. The total compensation package for each teacher includes not only salary, but health care, paid sick leave, extra pay for extracurricular activities, grants and pension contributions. This figure is not listed on the database. For example, coaching salaries are considered extra bonuses that aren’t included on the site. Coaching contracts are set up through the CHS Athletic Office.

“The district places a significant amount of money into a retirement plan, gives us health care benefits and lots of time off,” Kordenbrock said. “Our contract includes about 187 contract days, but I also choose to spend time during the summer in unpaid workshops.”

Whether payment is based upon merit or seniority pay, the Clayton teacher salaries are competitive with the Ladue, Parkway and Kirkwood school districts.