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In South Dakota, the Gap is Growing Between Targeted and Actual Teacher Pay

Joshua Haiar — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:00:00 +0000

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Schools are lagging the state’s target pay for teachers, and the gap is growing, according to data shared with a state board in Pierre.

That’s despite the 2016 Legislature’s efforts to address the problem by increasing the state’s sales tax by half a percentage point. This year, the Legislature reduced the state sales tax by three-tenths of a percentage point; meanwhile, the state’s average teacher pay .

The state’s Teacher Compensation Review Board conducted its first meeting of 2023 on Monday in Pierre.

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“South Dakota was so far behind everyone else,” said state Sen. and Board Chair Jim Bolin, R-Canton, a former teacher. “We didn’t move up significantly in the number of states we passed, but we did close the gap.”

According to a report shared by the state Department of Education, South Dakota teachers were making an average of $42,025 during the 2015/2016 school year. During the 2016/2017 school year, the number jumped to 46,979.

The average teacher salary among the state’s approximately 10,000 teachers is now an estimated $51,363. The state Department of Education showed slides with a target of $55,756 for this year. And the state may veer further off track from that goal without a significant increase in compensation. The state’s goal for 2024 is $59,659.

South Dakota’s average teacher salary ranks only above Mississippi and West Virginia (the rankings extend to No. 51 because Washington, D.C., is included). The state is last among neighboring states, and about 7% of South Dakota teachers leave the profession each year.

A presentation shared with the board said the state also faces a teacher shortage, especially in elementary, special education, language arts, fine arts and math. Aberdeen Superintendent Becky Guffin told board members about the consequences of not having adequate staffing.

“We no longer have a calculus or statistics class,” Guffin said. “And I think we used to offer four foreign languages. We’ll be struggling to have a Spanish class next year.”

South Dakota Department of Education Secretary Joseph Graves followed that, saying, “And they’re not reflected in the data because you can’t have an opening for a position you don’t have.”

Graves said the state has a number of efforts in place to improve the situation. Those include advertising to recruit teachers from outside the state, a mentor program, and that aims to help about 90 teacher aides from more than 50 school districts become fully certified teachers.

“Right now, we’re trying to see if the pilot works,” Graves said.

Ranking 49th in teacher pay is nothing to celebrate, said state Sen. Reynold Nesiba, D-Sioux Falls, who sits on the review board.

“Why can’t South Dakota be first in the region?” Nesiba told South Dakota Searchlight. “We should make education the priority that it deserves to be. When budgeting, we start there and build the rest of our budget around that. But we just don’t do that.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Kristi Noem that state government closed the 2023 budget year with a surplus of $96.8 million.

Bolin said he wants to raise teacher pay.

“We’re doing reasonably well, but not well enough if we’re wanting to stay competitive,” he told South Dakota Searchlight.

A dearth of qualified counselors also emerged as a pressing concern during the board meeting. Graves said the state is likely “way under” the ideal counselor-to-student ratio.

“You can’t hire guidance counselors,” Graves said. “There just aren’t any people in that profession.”

The board, which was created in 2016 when the Legislature raised sales taxes for teacher pay, aims to draft recommendations for the next legislative session in Pierre this winter. The board’s next public meeting is scheduled for Aug. 21.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

South Dakota High School Course Trains Students to Become Child Care Workers

Makenzie Huber — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 16:14:49 +0000

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There are 12,260 licensed child care slots in Sioux Falls, but 64% of child care centers can’t enroll their licensed capacity because they don’t have enough workers, according to the Sioux Falls Childcare Collaborative. That cuts actual available slots by hundreds — and it’s a familiar situation across the state.

The collaborative presented the results of a six-month study in June, detailing affordability challenges — for parents and caregivers — and potential solutions to address the need.

was “increase career pathways to the profession,” such as creating a high school dual-credit program or developing internships and job training programs.

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Beginning this fall, one of those solutions will kick off in schools across the state: a high school-level Child Development Associate (CDA) course. The course will allow high school students to earn the credential to work toward becoming an early childhood education professional at day cares and preschools while earning high school credits toward graduation.

“We can’t keep talking about how there’s a teacher and early childhood shortage and not do anything about it,” said Summer Schultz, incoming superintendent of the Brookings School District and former Dell Rapids superintendent. “Our preschools and day cares need to keep staffed with quality people. This opens the door for more trained individuals at an earlier date.”

The program allows any student in South Dakota interested in early childhood education to earn a CDA credential through a virtual course. Larger school districts, like Aberdeen and Harrisburg, will have their own in-person courses, said Travis Lape, innovative programs director at Harrisburg and Educators Rising SD state director.

The program was created through a partnership between Educators Rising SD, the state Department of Social Services, Sanford CHILD Services and the federal Department of Education Head Start Collaboration Office.

Educators Rising SD state officers pose for a photo with Gov. Kristi Noem. (Educators Rising SD)

The course combines required class time with required on-site training at day cares. Students will work 480 hours at a day care before earning their credential. While those students will have to be supervised at all times and won’t be left alone with children, it will be another set of hands to care for children, Lape said.

“Let’s say that the Sioux Falls School District alone had 100 kids in this course. We’d need 100 placements for those kids to earn their 480 hours. That’s 100 new employees,” Lape said. “If Harrisburg has 60, that’s 160 between the two school districts in the Sioux Falls metro. This attacks the early childhood education workforce in that we’ll have 16- to 18-year-olds who are passionate about early childhood education wanting to get their feet wet and work.”

Lape said the online virtual class will allow 30 students to attend in the first year and train at day cares in their community. About 10 spots are already filled, with student locations ranging from Madison to Yankton to Deuel County and Faulkton County. Lape expects more students will sign up throughout the summer.

Harrisburg and Aberdeen school districts will have about 100 students between the two school systems taking in-person classes this school year, Lape estimated.

Currently, day care workers seeking their CDA credential in South Dakota attend an online course run by a third-party agency funded by the state DSS. Sanford CHILD Services operates training in the Sioux Falls metro and Aberdeen areas, and it already had an online course and curriculum in place. It was relatively simple to turn the existing training into high school coursework with the partnership, Lape said.

The program “puts South Dakota well ahead of the curve” in addressing worker shortages in the field, said Deborah Bergeron, deputy director of collaboration and innovation for National Head Start Association. While there are CDA programs in high schools in other states, those are in individual schools rather than being available statewide.

Bergeron hopes to see students fill needed positions at Head Start locations across the state. Head Start is a federally funded program that delivers early learning, health, nutrition and family support services to impoverished children up to age 5. South Dakota has .

Nationally, 20% of Head Start and Early Head Start classrooms were closed between May and September 2022, primarily due to staff vacancies. That meant sending children home, where some parents couldn’t work or had to attempt to enroll them in programs that were too expensive.

“We serve the most vulnerable kids in the country,” Bergeron said. “The impact is more than the kid not attending preschool. Head Start is where they generally get the best nutrition, where they’re connected with well child visits at the doctor, where we catch early learning disabilities that might not get noticed otherwise.”

The program will only address the “increased pathways” recommendation by the Sioux Falls Childcare Collaborative. Other factors, such as low employee salaries, are major factors in the workforce shortage.

The mean hourly wage for child care workers in Sioux Falls in May 2022 was $12.34, about $26,000 a year. The report recommends subsidizing child care by local businesses, the city or state government to help address that issue.

Students in the new CDA course will attend two classes a week for 90 minutes each. Outside of class, students will work in local child care centers to earn their 480 hours of on-the-job supervised experience.

“If a school has to fund a math teacher or an education training teacher, you know where they’ll fund it. It’s the math teacher, even though we know we need an education training teacher for teaching the next generation of teachers,” Lape said. “We wanted to take that barrier away.”

Typically, it would cost $800 for a child care provider to earn the credential, but the program doesn’t charge students. DSS awarded Sanford a contract to provide the instructor and coursework, Lape added.

If students decide not to enter into the workforce directly after high school, the program could count toward credit hours to earn an associate or bachelor’s degree in the field. Lape said it’s a launching point for students who might be interested in other teaching paths outside of early childhood education.

“This training is not going to make you a bad teacher,” Lape said. “If anything, it’ll help you understand the bigger picture — development, safety, health and wellness. It’s a stepping stone.”

When Kids Go Hungry: Studies Show Gains vs. Hunger Lost With End of Tax Credit

David Dewitt — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 17:00:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association in October confirmed previous research that food insecurity increased substantially after the expiration of federal monthly advanced child tax credits on Jan. 15, 2022.

The study looked at the period between January and July of this year in a series of national surveys, and found a nearly 25% increase in food insufficiency, impacting Black, Hispanic and Indigenous families the most.

The article published Oct. 21 in JAMA, “,” involved a cross-sectional study of repeated surveys from a nationally representative sample of 592,044 U.S. households.

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“The findings of this study suggest that the loss of monthly (child tax credit) payments was associated with an increase in the prevalence of households with children in the U.S. reporting sometimes or often not having enough to eat, a condition associated with adverse health outcomes across the life span,” the article’s findings conclude.

The Advance Child Tax Credit (CTC) monthly payments from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) were administered to more than 35 million households with children in the U.S. between July and December 2021. Numbers from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . The tax credits were associated with a substantial decrease in food insufficiency, the study said.

Under ARPA, three major changes to the credit were enacted for tax year 2021: an expansion of eligibility to include families earning very low or no income; a boost in credit amounts from a maximum credit of $2,000 per child per year previously to $3,000 per child aged 6 to 17 per year and $3,600 per child younger than 6 per year; and provision for half of the credit as an advanced monthly payment between July and December 2021.

As a result of these changes, an estimated 92% of families with children were eligible to receive $250 to $300 monthly per child between July and December 2021, the study said. National data show that parents report spending the monthly CTC payments on food, utilities, rent, clothing, and educational expenses, the article said.

These monthly payments expired in January 2022 after U.S. Congress failed to extend the policy.

During a series of surveys done by researchers, just before CTC expiration, unadjusted household food insufficiency was 12.7% among households with children.

In late January and early February 2022, following the first missed CTC monthly payment, 13.6% of households with children reported food insufficiency, increasing to 16% by late June and early July 2022.

“Given the well-documented associations between inability to afford food and poor health outcomes across the life span, Congress should consider swift action to reinstate this policy,” the JAMA article recommended.

These latest findings reflect earlier research done by the national nonpartisan Brookings Institution research group and published in April 2022 in a report titled, “”

Brookings researchers said the temporary tax credit expansion “was unprecedented in its reach,” and that it lifted 3.7 million children out of poverty as of December 2021.

“The expanded CTC significantly improved food security and healthy eating among those eligible,” Brookings found.

Moreover, that study said, around 70% of CTC recipients who were negatively affected by inflation said the payments helped them to better manage higher prices.

Apart from increased food security, other areas Brookings said the tax credits helped families included statistically significant declines in credit card debt compared to those not eligible; reductions in reliance on high-cost financial services such as payday loans and pawn shops, and also reduced rates of selling blood plasma; increased ability to manage emergency expenses and strengthening of family emergency funds; and significant declines in evictions.

Brookings also found the credit allowed families of color to make significant investments in their children’s long-term educational outcomes. Black, Hispanic and other non-white households were more likely to use the credit for child care and education expenses, Brookings found.

Sioux Falls Leaders Bring Students to Workforce Event, Aiming to Stem ‘Brain Drain’

Joshua Haiar — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 17:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

High-schoolers received special focus at a day-long workforce summit Wednesday at the Sioux Falls Convention Center.

The Sioux Falls Development Foundation hosted the . The event featured guest speakers and community business leaders sharing insights, and opportunities for young people to build relationships with those leaders.

Approximately 70% of in-state students graduating from a South Dakota public university remain in the state after graduation. The other 30% leave. This means the state is investing tax dollars to educate some workers who don’t stay – an issue commonly referred to as “brain drain.”

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Denise Guzzetta, vice president of talent and workforce development with the Sioux Falls Development Foundation, said students meeting with city leaders improves their likelihood of calling Sioux Falls home in the future.

“So it’s very important for them to socialize and get connected to business and community leaders,” Guzzetta said. “Everybody has a role to play in the workforce. It’s not just the employers. It’s the community.”

Guzzetta said the city has talented kids in the school system.

“We work hand-in-hand with students so they understand what’s possible here versus somewhere else,” she said. “This is a generation that’s going to be entering the workforce in very large numbers. Baby Boomers are retiring and exiting the workforce. And so we need these young people here.”

Students and guests hear from speakers at the Sioux Falls Development Foundation’s WIN Summit. (Joshua Haiar/SD Searchlight)

And the message is getting through to some.

Lincoln High School student Jesuit Munoz moved to Sioux Falls from Puerto Rico. He said events like the WIN Summit have shown him South Dakota is the right place to put down roots.

“I see many opportunities here,” he said. “In Puerto Rico, there are not as many. So, I’m here. I’m good in Sioux Falls. I like this.”

That’s what Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken wants to hear. He said the city still has an extremely low unemployment rate of 2 percent despite a record number of people moving to the city last year.

“If you ask me how this works, how 7,000 people move here yet we have record low unemployment, I don’t know. I don’t get it,” TenHaken said. “I do know that COVID has created a whole different set of options for people who had to go into the office. Now, they can be anywhere.”