This school is offering $3,000 signing bonuses to teach middle school math. And it only wants the best

Whoever lands a gig teaching sixth grade math at Manatee School for the Arts is kind of a big deal.

The charter school has cast a wide net as it searches for two new sixth grade math openings, sending recruiting letters to the most highly rated math teachers in school districts across the state, touting higher-than-expected salaries and offering signing bonuses up to $3,000.

“We want the best players on our team,” said Terence Devine, MSA’s assistant principal for student and instructional support.

Devine said he didn’t know how many letters went out, but ballparked it at “easily several hundred.”

The move is the latest salvo in what many see as the rise of charter schools over traditional public schools. Earlier this month, Gov. Rick Scott signed a wide-sweeping education reform bill that heavily favors the charter school system and enraged public school advocates across the state.

MSA, which has operated in Manatee County for 20 years, targeted math teachers rated in the top 30 percent of the state’s “high impact teachers.” The Florida Department of Education released the list of high impact teachers this year based on a teacher’s value-added model (VAM) score. The score estimates how much a specific teacher contributed to a student’s learning.

Susan Bischoff, a fourth grade math teacher at Bashaw Elementary School, received one of the letters. Her grandson attends Bashaw, so she is not going to apply at MSA, but the numbers were intriguing.

“It’s interesting because I’m not looking for a job change, but it offered a recruiting bonus up to $3,000,” Bischoff said. “It was hard to throw away.”

According to Manatee’s employee salary list, Bischoff earned $55,816 as a teacher with her master’s degree in her 20th year in the district in 2016-17. She likely would earn roughly $60,000 at MSA, according to the school’s pay scale, plus the $3,000 one-time signing bonus. Teachers in the top 10 percent of VAM scores would receive a one-time signing bonus of $3,000, the top 20 percent receive $2,000 and top 30 percent receive $1,000.

Devine said MSA recognizes all teaching experience, whether public, private or charter, so a teacher coming from another district would enter the pay scale where they left off. A teacher in their first year with a bachelor’s degree at MSA would earn $41,350. That same teacher would earn $38,285 in Manatee.

Devine said the school has sent similar letters the past four or five years and has wooed several teachers to make the jump from public schools to the charter school, but no former Manatee County teachers have made the switch. He said in addition to a higher pay scale, the school offers teachers more creativity in how they teach the curriculum than typical public school teachers.

“We provide teachers with the opportunity to use their skills, to be the teacher in the classroom and give them the freedom to teach,” Devine said.

Teacher’s union president Pat Barber said she had been expecting districts to begin recruiting, especially as performance pay scales differ across county lines and the number of available and interested applicants for positions has diminished. But, she said, she was surprised to see the recruiting effort begin with a charter school. And she said interested teachers need to consider factors beyond base salary.

“The same as anything else you do, buyer beware,” Barber said. “You need to know what the whole compensation package looks like.”

In spite of not taking the bait, Bischoff was impressed by the overture.

“You’ve got to admire their wanting to have the best teachers,” Bischoff said.

This story was originally published June 27, 2017 at 5:18 PM with the headline "This school is offering $3,000 signing bonuses to teach middle school math. And it only wants the best."