The school announced that teacher salaries will increase again for the 2024-2025 school year during a faculty meeting. The school introduced variable wage rates six years ago, changing the preceding constant rate of around 3%, according to History Department Head Celia Goedde.
The school has increased salaries to match the pace of post-pandemic inflation and high costs of living according to Head of School Laura Ross. Ross said increasing teacher wages reflects the school’s desire to maintain exceptional faculty.
“It’s getting harder to recruit and retain top people with the cost of living,” Ross said. “Our goal is to have the most competitive salaries in Los Angeles so that if someone wants to come teach here, they feel like they are able to make that choice [without] having to think about compensation. I talked to other schools that have so much turnover, and that’s not something we deal with a lot.”
Math teacher Josh Helston said the school has been successful in ensuring teacher salaries keep pace with inflation.
“[The school] does a very good job of treating and compensating us fairly for the work that we do,” Helston said. “[It] has been keeping us ahead of inflation so that a raise is actually a raise. If you get raised about 3% [under the previous system] then you’re maintaining the same wages.”
Ross said increasing teacher wages reflects the school’s desire to maintain exceptional faculty.
“It’s getting harder to recruit and retain top people with the cost of living,” Ross said. “Our goal is to have the most competitive salaries in Los Angeles so that if someone wants to come teach here, they feel like they are able to make that choice [without] having to think about compensation. I talked to other schools that have so much turnover, and that’s not something we deal with a lot.”
Goedde said the salary increases help teachers keep up with inflation while boosting their loyalty to the school.
“Before the pandemic, [pay] was above the rate of inflation, so that was very helpful,” Goedde said. “[Pay increases] are [also] that vote of confidence from the administration and from the board, saying ‘we see the difficulties that teachers are having, and we want to do what we can to try and alleviate at least some of those difficulties.”
Ross said the school has had to increase tuition and find other sources of revenue to maintain the pay increases.
“The way [the] school’s finances work is that its number on source of revenue is tuition, and its number one expense is faculty and staff compensation,” Ross said. “Over the last six years, we have increased our faculty and staff salaries above tuition [because] we’ve been able to find savings elsewhere and pour as much money as we can [into salaries]. We are again keeping our faculty and staff salaries high for next year, and we’ve had to increase tuition a little higher than faculty and staff [pay] increases to get back to actually making this change sustainable [in the] future.”
