The School Committee and the Pioneer Valley Regional Education Association (PVREA) have reached a landmark agreement that provides district educators with historic pay increases. Pioneer teachers will now become among the best paid in our county over the three years of the contract.
Contract highlights
15% salary increase, at minimum, for all educators over three years
Cost-of-living-adjustments of 3%/3%/3%
Three new steps added at top of scale, with 2% between steps
Increase of up to 31% for some educators
$52,000 minimum starting salary
$1,000 one-time bonus
15 minutes added to teacher work day
Greater flexibility for administration when scheduling teacher time during the work day
Read the documents
Context
It is critically important that our community understand that the School Committee voluntarily and proactively invited the PVREA to reopen contract discussions last fall. The existing 2022-25 contract had 1.5 years remaining in duration, and contract talks would therefore typically have begun during the coming school year.
The School Committee’s invitation to reopen contract talks reflects its deep commitment to providing district educators with a competitive salary package.
Through careful budgeting and long-range planning, the district is able to support the proposed financial package with no major increases anticipated to town assessments over the three years of the contract.
The increase to teacher compensation will allow us to reach two key goals: to retain the excellent educators who have already committed themselves to the district and to recruit new educators who will bring added value to our educational programming.
