Park City School District Is The 30th Highest Paying School District in the Country for First Year Teachers

It’s an interesting time for schools and teachers in the Park City School District. The School Board appears hell-bent on going on a building binge. Listening to school district officials on KPCW this week talking about the additional buildings the district wants, it sounds like a kid on Christmas Eve who almost can’t wait for Santa to deliver a new XBOX, a scooter, a doll house, a bike, a laptop, an iPad, an iPhone, and maybe even an Apple Watch.

The problem is that money doesn’t grow on trees and at some point people will say, “we already have one of the best school districts in the state…how do students benefit from spending millions more.” This may not impact those buildings but could likely impact teacher salaries.

It turns out that Park City’s starting teacher salaries are among the top 50 highest salaries in the country. According to Top Masters in Education, Park City’s is the 30th highest paying school district IN THE COUNTRY for first year teachers. That would put us in the top 0.2% of all school districts in the country.

So when people’s taxes go up $100 per year to build new schools and then a year later they are asked for more tax dollars to increase teacher salaries, what is the likely response? We wouldn’t be surprised to hear from the public that “Park City teachers are already in the top 1% of all teachers, our schools are already pretty good, and we just gave. So, no thanks.”

In my mind it comes down to deciding whether to spend money on buildings or teachers. If that’s the choice, I’ll always bet on the teacher.