Excess Teacher Turnover Prevention Grants
Grant Overview
The goal of the grant program is to attempt to keep teachers in SED recognized eligible position codes (218, 220, 222, 263, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273 and 274) in eligible programs from leaving the employment of one provider for employment at another provider that pays a higher salary. Distribution of grant funds should be made with that goal in mind.
Award amounts are to be paid in addition to compensation that the teaching staff would have received if the grant program did not exist (supplement, not supplant). The way in which that is determined, and the way in which these additional funds are to be spent, are left up to the agency, and if applicable, the teachers’ union representing the teachers at that agency. Examples of acceptable expenditures would be salary increases, payroll taxes, fringe benefits, lump sum bonuses, tuition programs, etc.
Grant awards are eventually built into the tuition rates over a two-year period. The certifications signed by the Chief Administrators at the time the grant funds are received stipulate that the agency will continue to spend these monies in future years. Once these costs have been built into the tuition rates, the school will continue to receive the funding as long as they continue to incur these costs in the same program they were originally disbursed to for a particular two-year award cycle. Any rate growth increases given in rate setting methodology for a given school year will also be added to the grant-related costs that are in the tuition rates.
Pending inclusion in the annual state budget, award amounts are given in two-year cycles. Years one and two would have the same award amount; years three and four would have the same award amount; years five and six would have the same award amount; etc. The awards are the same for two years as that is the rate processing time required for a given amount to be permanently built into the tuition rate. If an agency received an award of $10,000 for each of the first two years, $15,000 for the third and fourth years, and $20,000 for the fifth and sixth years, a total of $45,000 ($10,000 + $15,000 + $20,000) plus applicable rate growth amounts would be in future tuition rates as long as the funds continue to be paid to eligible teachers in eligible programs.
Agencies may want to design a method that allows them to account for these additional monies from year to year, separately from normal compensation, so that it may be demonstrated that the amounts did not supplant compensation which would have been given anyway. While lump sum payments are not required to be used, lump sum payments may be the most efficient and transparent manner to ensure that all payments are properly made.
It should also be noted that if a provider decides to distribute the additional compensation in one form in one year (e.g. lump sum bonus), they do not necessarily have to distribute it in that manner in the following years (e.g. lump sum the first two years of a cycle when checks or transfers are received, and then build into the base salaries going forward).