Addressing the Pay Gap: Recommendations to the K–12 Basic Education Compensation Advisory Committee

AWSP has always advocated strongly for principals, but we've turned up the efforts to 11. For the past four years, principals and assistant principals across the state have seen workloads go up and pay gaps (aka wage compression) shrink. Some of your principals and APs reading this probably make less money per year than some of the teachers in your building. Even  more of  you  might   make less on a per diem basis. Between this narrowing pay gap,  the  massive  amounts  of  additional  responsibilities,  and the 60-hour,  6-day  work  week  (the statewide averages in our past survey), the  system  is  out  of  balance.  Good  principals  are  leaving  and  future  leaders  are  wondering  if  the  sacrifices  are  worth  it.  We  addressed  these out-of-balance expectations and disappearing pay gaps with the document linked at the end of this blog post; it's our letter and proposal to the K-12 Basic Education Compensation Advisory Committee.

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Workgroup Overview and Purpose

Legislation passed in 2021 directs OSPI to convene a K-12 Basic Education Compensation Advisory Committee to develop recommendations to the Governor and the Legislature that supports recruiting and retaining a multicultural and multilingual educator workforce. The focus of proposals should address how compensation could be structured, and what could be put in place to attract and retain a highly qualified, multilingual, and multicultural workforce.

Read Proposal