Catlin Gabel School emphasizes “independence” in schools through teacher autonomy and revamped salary scale

By Lauren Mei Calora (‘20)

Although other local schools may provide higher salaries to their teachers, Catlin Gabel School (CGS) continues to attract a variety of qualified and specialized teachers. 

Teachers largely choose to work at CGS because they can autonomously create curricula, build teacher-student connections, and work in an engaging and inspiring environment.   

“The old school reasoning has been people choose to teach at independent schools for a lot of other reasons aside from pay. I think that’s true, and in a city like Portland, where the cost of living is increasing, we really want to do better as a school,” said Assistant Head of CGS Barbara Ostos.

According to the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), independent schools have the ability to manage their own governance and finances which allows for more freedoms like hiring teachers based on institution standards rather than certification requirements or allowing teachers to teach their own curricula. 

The ability to create curricula at independent schools is attractive to teachers because teachers can choose to teach based on their interests, allowing for professional growth and experimentation. Many public school districts require teachers to teach a set curriculum and offer teachers much less control over what they teach.

“There are few if any jobs in the world that allow employees more autonomy (setting one’s goals), mastery (supporting one’s own professional growth), and purpose (working towards a noble end) than that of an independent school teacher,” NAIS explained on their website.

Based on 15 interviews conducted with CGS teachers, mostly Upper School teachers, the reasons why teachers continue to teach at CGS were similar to the findings that NAIS cited.

“Historically, teachers have been willing to work in independent schools for less cash compensation than they would receive in the local public schools because of the ‘climate advantage’ in independent schools, but boards are beginning to recognize that the climate advantage must be supplemented by competitiveness in cash compensation,” said NAIS.

The “climate advantage” is the concept that at independent schools, students and teachers have access to benefits that aren’t easily available at public schools like smaller class sizes.

None of the CGS teachers interviewed explicitly cited compensation as a reason why they teach at CGS. Compared to Portland Public Schools (PPS), Beaverton School District (BSD), and Oregon Episcopal School (OES), CGS has lower teacher salaries.

“Independent school scales are typically never at what public school scales are,” Ostos acknowledged.

Like many other schools and school districts, CGS uses a teacher salary scale to determine determines each teacher’s salary based on their years of experience and education level. 

For 2019-2020, the lowest CGS teacher annual salary is around $39,000 and the highest salary is above $81,000. In comparison, PPS starts at around $43,000 and ends above $88,000. BSD starts at around $45,000 and ends above $92,000. OES did not want to share their scale, as the Department of Human Resources explained that the information was “internal proprietary information” and sharing it could cause “price-fixing.”

When it comes to comparing CGS to OES, Ostos has also been unable to obtain the OES teacher salary scale.

“OES’ salary scale is higher than ours... I’ve never seen the scale, but I know that,” Ostos said, mentioning that previous CGS teachers who have moved to teach at OES have had conversations with her.

“A difference is we have 70% tuition remission and [OES] has 50% tuition remission. They’re putting their dollars towards salary for everyone, while we’ve decided to put our dollars towards remission,” said Ostos.

Tuition remission means that part or all of a child’s tuition has been waived for faculty. At CGS, teachers with children benefit from a 70% tuition remission. However, this isn’t an equitable benefit for teachers who don’t have children at CGS or who don’t plan on having children. Some might view these teachers as losing out on a $20,000 benefit each year.

The decision to offer tuition remission at CGS has been longstanding.

“We are not looking to change remission at this time, but the fact is that it’s an inequitable benefit,” said Ostos.

The salary scale was initially created at CGS to make teacher salaries more equitable. Before the implementation of the scale, Ostos explained that the previous system was too subjective. 

Ostos conducted research comparing the salary scale at CGS to other independent schools in locations with a similar cost of living as Portland.

Ostos’ research has informed her goals of rethinking the current system. Last year, she began to take on the question that she phrased as, “How do we start a path to start paying teachers more?”

For the future, Ostos is continuing to do quantitative comparisons with independent schools and nearby public schools with available data. She has also put together a task force of teachers to create a philosophy of values for a salary system that Ostos, the CGS Board of Trustees, and Head of School Tim Bazemore can use to inform how they think about restructuring teacher salaries for the future. 

“The reality is that we will not, at least in the next several years, be on par with any public school scale. We could set that as a potential goal, but it’s not financially achievable,” said Ostos.

There are many factors for determining the future of teacher salary scale, and Ostos and CGS are continuing to try to improve the system that balances teachers’ values with those of the school.

Having conversations about teacher salaries and how CGS chooses to structure teacher salaries requires careful thought and consideration from administrators and teachers about what teachers find meaningful about their work.

Many teachers chose to respond to the questions, “What brought you to CGS?” and “Why do you continue to teach at CGS?” None of them mentioned salary in their responses.

Based on the interviews, the value of teaching at CGS comes from the teachers’ colleagues, autonomy, and students.

(Graphic venn diagram with results to the question, “Why do you continue to teach at CGS?” based on fifteen teacher interviews. Most teachers cited additional reasons, but colleagues, autonomy, and students were recurring answers. Graphic by Lauren Mei Calora)

In the interviews, often in connection with the recurring answers, teachers explained a fulfilling level of professional growth from creating their own curricula, working with colleagues, or pushing themselves to understand how to best support their students. 

Graphic by Lauren Mei Calora.

Teachers care deeply about their work, and CGS helps create a space where teachers can do the work they want.