Pending Legislation Regarding Teacher Compensation

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“Fine Tuning” Episode 8 (Now with Practice Pointers!)

By Lea Filippi, Sedor, Wendlandt, Evans & Filippi, LLC

We continue our Commentary series “fine tuning” by drawing attention to one of the education-related bills filed with the Legislature this month.

On March 7, Governor Dunleavy announced proposed legislation to create a recruitment and retention incentive for certain certified public school teachers. The Governor’s proposal has since been introduced as HB 106 in the House where it has been referred to the House Education Committee. Identical language has been introduced as SB 97 in the Senate where it has been referred to the Senate Education Committee. Both Committees are holding hearings.  

This proposed legislation would create a mechanism for public school teachers to receive a bonus payment during the summer for a period of three years. The bonus would only be available to full-time classroom teachers who were employed by an Alaska school district the whole prior school year. The amount of the bonus payment would depend upon where they worked. For example, teachers working in more urban districts could receive $5,000 while teachers in more remote areas could receive $15,000. The funding for the bonuses would come from grants from DEED to employing school districts for payment to eligible teachers who had timely applied to DEED and been certified by their employing district as eligible. These summer bonus payments would be subject to applicable employee and employer deductions, including for TRS-purposes.

A significant wrinkle is that the bonus payments that full-time teachers could receive in July 2024, 2025, and 2026 would all be subject to appropriation. This means that teachers could only receive bonus payments in July 2024 if those bonuses make it into the State’s operating budget for FY25. Because HB 106 and SB 97 do not include forward funding and the State’s operating budget is often not finalized until after recruitment for next year’s teachers is already well under way, this legislation providing for potential future summer bonus payments may have limited utility as a recruitment tool. 

Practice Pointers

Together with each month’s Commentary, we offer some “Practice Pointers,” or practical suggestions for school board members and administrators to consider. Please consider:

  1. School district administrators should keep an eye on HB 106 and SB 97 as those bills move through the legislative committee process in order to be aware of potential amendments to the bonus mechanism.
  2. During recruitment, school districts should refrain from promising summer bonuses to employees or potential employees because bonus payments would be subject to appropriation in next year’s State budget.

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