WVEA's Salary Plan

Despite the talent, energy and passion of West Virginia’s education employees, over a decade of inattention by our elected leaders to salary issues has placed West Virginia’s public schools in the precarious position of finding highly qualified individuals for positions in our school systems.

“The numbers are shocking,” states WVEA President Charlie Delauder. “Many of our school systems have vacancies that can’t be filled by fully certified people and our college graduates who have chosen education as a career are leaving the state to find higher paying jobs or choosing to find another profession upon graduation.”

“We must address the issue of salary and it must occur this legislative session,” continued Delauder. “WVEA has a thorough plan to achieve our goal of reaching the national average in employee salaries in the next three years (approximately 8% each year) and increasing the beginning salary to $35,000.  In addition, we are asking for another reduction in the local share in order to free up additional money to the counties for salary increases at the local level.  This will aid all counties in the state, but would be of particular assistance to those in the eastern panhandle. WVEA recognizes the special needs of the eastern panhandle counties and will once again this year attempt to work with the legislature to ease some of the burden that education employees face in that area of the state. We all need to work together to make our plan a reality.”

The stark reality is that West Virginia’s public education employees rank far behind most other states in the country in salaries.  In 1992-1993, West Virginia’s teachers achieved their highest ever national ranking of 30th  - below the national  average.

Now, just about a dozen years later, we find ourselves ranked 48th and the gap between us and the national average growing.  The gap is currently $10.044.

“That is just unacceptable,” states WVEA Executive Director David Haney.  “As a state, we can’t just ‘make do’ forever.  We have to take action or we will be to the point where we are too far behind to ever catch up. Our employees have sacrificed enough and our students will suffer the consequences of the beginning stages of a teacher shortage.  We must act and we must act now.”

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NOTE: WVEA’s salary plan is for all public education employees - professional employees, education support professionals and higher education faculty and staff. The data and the statistics used in this campaign will refer to teachers because reliable comparative data for education support professionals and higher education employees is not available. The differences in job descriptions, reporting etc., make those comparisons invalid. When the term ‘education employees’ or ‘educators’ is used it refers to all the groups - professional, ESP and higher education.