The entire country is facing a teacher shortage and Mesa County is no different, but some recent discussions around increasing teacher pay and providing affordable housing could help.

Low teacher salaries and retention of qualified teachers featured prominently in the conversation at the Mesa County Valley School District 51 board coffee meeting last weekend, according to reporting in The Daily Sentinel.

A local resident called District 51 teacher salaries “abysmal.” Board President Andrea Haitz said recent salary increases for educators and administrators have been based on a percentage rate, which places educators at a much lower pay scale than administrators.

She said administrators are making 5% less than the state average while teachers are making 12% to 15% less than the state average. Haitz said the district is working on making pay more equitable for educators.

This year’s budget was a good start, providing teachers with an average pay hike of 10% for the 2021-22 school year, administrators and staff were given an average 8% increase. Some of those increases, however, were eaten up by a 6% hike in employees’ medical insurance costs for this year.

We don’t think teacher pay should be pitted against paying administration officials what they are worth. While teachers should be the focus, the district shouldn’t pay administrators significantly less than the state average, either. They play an important role as leaders in the district, and we need to be able to attract qualified candidates.

Still, getting teacher’s salaries to be around the state average should be the school board’s primary goal. While Mesa County certainly has cheaper cost of living compared to the Front Range, it’s getting less affordable due to inflation and high housing costs.

We were glad to hear the District 51 school board consider ways to solve the housing issue by unanimously approving the formation of the D51 Affordable Homeownership Program Committee. The program is being co-led by George Rau and former school board member Tom Parrish.

“We’re putting together a subcommittee to make an affordable home ownership program – it’s not a rental program; it’s an ownership program – where teachers can get into their own homes so that, in 10 years, 20 years into the future, they’ll be able to live in the community they teach in,” Rau said.

The Affordable Homeownership Program Committee’s hope is to have a plan approved by the board to build affordable housing units for district staff and place covenants on the properties to ensure that their prices don’t increase and that they’ll always be occupied by district staff as intended.

This, combined with continued pay raises should put the district in a better place to retain and recruit teachers. This is, maybe, the most important issue facing our schools and it’s good to see the board take it head on.

We know the pandemic and the recent politicization and focus on schools must be adding more pressure to the already stressful job teachers have to perform. We’re thankful to the experienced teachers in the district that have held on through this time and continue to provide our children with a quality education. We expect the district to follow through on their efforts to make teaching here a more affordable prospect.

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel editorial board