Wrangell’s High School science teacher Heather Howe is the president of the Wrangell Teachers’ Association. She said the district struggles to keep paraprofessionals long-term and she hopes the union can change that.
She said, “They love the job, but they can’t afford to stay.”
Howe said the issue comes down to the pay for work that can be physically and emotionally demanding.
Paraprofessional pay starts at $17.73 an hour. Intensive paraprofessionals, who work closely with students with special needs, earn $0.75 more. The maximum pay tops out at $25.55.
Howe said the union submitted a resolution to the school board in November, asking the board to adjust the pay scale and include benefits.
“I’ve been here 15 years, and I can’t remember a year that this wasn’t brought up in some form or fashion,” she said.
Most paraprofessionals work 5.75 hours each day – just short of full time status, which would require the district to offer benefits.
Howe said paraprofessionals play a key role in classrooms, supporting not just individual students, but often entire classes.
“I definitely think that we’d see a lot of students that were not successful in school,” she said. “We’d probably have a much higher dropout rate, because students need that support.”
Adam Morse started working as a paraprofessional in 2012 and stayed with the position for 10 years. After working in a computer lab, he moved into an intensive paraprofessional role with special education. He worked one-on-one with the same student from second through seventh grade.
“Over the course of the five years, we kind of grew close to each other, and it was nice going in,” he said. “He was genuinely excited to see me most days.”
After that student moved away from Wrangell, Morse said the school district reassigned him and he eventually felt burnt out.
Reduced hours
When he started, Morse worked full time and said the pay was an improvement over his previous job. But after a few years, the district reduced his hours to 5.75 hours per day.
“If I was a single parent or just a single person in general, I wouldn’t have been able to survive off that job..I would have had to have two jobs, which I did during the summer. I worked out at the restaurant,” he said. “But if it wasn’t for my wife’s salary, it wouldn’t have been a sustainable job, in my opinion.”
Morse said retention is a key concern.
“Most of our para positions are filled right now.”
However, Superintendent Joshua Garrett said the district is close to fully staffed.
He said, “Most of our para positions are filled right now, so we don’t have a shortage.”
Garrett said he appreciates WTA raising concerns about pay.
He said, “Who doesn’t want to get paid more? And everybody deserves to be paid more.”
He also said that some paras in the district work full time, so they do get benefits.
Classified staff discuss unionizing
But as for pay increases, the board wouldn’t be able to act on that right now, since classified staff, which includes paraprofessionals, are talking about unionizing.
The WTA serves as the union for Alaska-certified teachers. These teachers belong in the certified staff group, which is different than classified staff.
Garrett said, “At this point, the board’s hand is tied in giving raises because the classified staff is going through a unionization process.”
Garrett said the Department of Labor told the school district administration to not interfere in any way with salaries during this process. But once the classified staff decides to unionize or not, the school board would discuss with them possible salary changes.
