04.11.06
HISD employees underpaid, happy with jobs
Poll finds HISD workers like jobs, not pay
Nearly 40% say their salaries aren’t competitive with other districts
– reported by the Houston Chronicle
While Houston Independent School District employees are overwhelmingly satisfied with their jobs, nearly 40 percent of workers don’t think their salaries are competitive with those paid by other school districts.
In addition, almost 30 percent of HISD teachers said the state’s largest school district is on the “wrong track,” and 25 percent said they’d take a job in another district for the same pay, according to a $20,000 poll conducted this year by Florida-based Market Research Insight.
[snip]
More than 4,000 of the district’s 30,000 employees were randomly selected to participate in the study, which was conducted mainly via the Internet in January and February. About half of the 2,432 employees who completed the survey were teachers, most of whom have less than 10 years of experience.
[snip]
A salary study released by the union this month shows that Houston’s $36,050 salary for new teachers for 2005-06 was lower than the starting pay in Katy, Cypress-Fairbanks, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio. Houston teachers, however, outearn teachers in those districts at the 20-year mark.
The union’s study also showed that the number of six-figure earners in HISD remained relatively flat this year at 48. Eight of those $100,000-plus earners are campus principals this year, compared with two last year.
[snip]
