Government

No Substantial Discussions as Yet on Increased Teacher Base Pay, Says Government's Chief Negotiator

A cost analysis has to be carried out to calculate the financial impact of increasing the starting salary for new teachers to $50,000, before the government’s financial team can begin negotiations. That is according to Joss Springette, chief negotiator at the Office of Collective Bargaining, who told legislators on Tuesday that there has not yet been any substantial conversation about how much increasing the pay scale would cost. “That’s a process that we have to work on before having a discussion further with the governor and OMB [Office of Management and Budget] because that’s a large group, the largest bargaining unit, so the process of calculating that will take some time,” she said. “Once we have a costing we’ll have a better sense of what that would look like and the financial impact,” she added. In a bid to attract people to the teaching profession, Governor Albert Bryan Jr. announced in his State of the Territory address in January that the starting salary would be increase...