Missouri school district hopes new education leadership will focus on funding rural teacher salaries

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) — As students prepare to return to school in a month, small school districts across Missouri are struggling to meet new requirements.

Small, rural districts like Tipton R-6, just west of Jefferson City, have only a few hundred students. The Tipton Superintendent fears they won’t be able to pay their teachers the new $40,000 base salary requirement for teachers unless the state extends the Teacher Baseline Salary Grant every year.

According to Terry Robinson, PhD, principal at Tipton R-6, smaller districts have a hard time finding and paying good teachers because of competition from neighboring districts.

“It’s very unclear how much of that burden we as a rural school district will have to bear,” Robinson said.

Missouri ranks 50th in the U.S. for starting teacher salaries, according to the Missouri NEA. While the starting salary was recently increased to $40,000 under the recently signed omnibus education bill, it is still well below the national living wage of $46,000.

Karla Eslinger, the new commissioner of the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, recently took up her new position and indicated that the concern surrounding teacher salaries is also a priority for the ministry.

“I really applaud those who are behind this (the pay raise). We can put these kinds of things into law, but the real work comes when we fully fund our schools,” Eslinger said.

Under the new legislation, the state would pay 70% of the salary, with school districts covering the rest. It was approved in 2023 with a $7 million budget and extended in 2024.

This year, several Missouri lawmakers tried to make the teacher pay subsidy permanent, but it never got out of committee.

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