The gulf between the Denver teachers union and the school district on the ProComp teacher pay system became crystal clear Thursday when the two sides met with a citizen’s group to explain their positions in an ongoing contract dispute. (See this story for background)

But the meeting revealed a potentially more troubling gulf – between what voters may have understood ProComp to be when they approved a $25 million annual mill levy increase to fund it, and how the program actually works.

Members of the A-Plus Denver citizens committee grilled the top brass of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and Denver Public Schools during a 90-minute question-and-answer session at The Piton Foundation.

Perhaps the only area of agreement between the two sides was that ProComp as currently constructed needs changes. Not enough teachers are opting in and too much money is spent on administering the program.

But DPS wants to make substantive changes now, while the union would rather wait until a three-year evaluation is completed late next year.

Led by aggressive probing from Federico Peña, an A-Plus co-chair and former Denver mayor, committee members learned that only a tiny percentage of ProComp funds is paid to teachers as bonuses. The vast majority of the money goes into so-called “salary building” elements of the plan, which means that once gained, many of the monetary incentives remain a permanent part of a teacher’s salary.

DPS Chief Operating Officer Tom Boasberg estimated that 98 percent of DPS teacher salary money goes to salary-building components of ProComp and the traditional salary schedule, with just 2 percent going to bonuses.

Henry Roman, the DCTA’s treasurer and an expert in the ProComp system, disputed Boasberg’s figures and said the split was something closer to 60-40 – with 60 percent of salary money going to salary-building and 40 percent to incentive pay.

But DPS officials insisted that 90 percent of the money dedicated to ProComp – not including, money in the traditional salary system – is paid out in salary-building. This means that if a teacher meets a salary-building objective once, that extra money becomes a permanent part of that teacher’s base salary.

Several committee members expressed concern that voters may have been misled or misunderstood the nature of ProComp when they voted to fund it in 2005. The plan was widely touted in media reports as a merit-pay or performance-pay plan, when, in fact,  that is only a small part of what ProComp does.

Under ProComp , teachers can receive additional pay for working in low-income schools, teaching hard to fill positions such as middle school math or Spanish-language bilingual education. They also get rewarded for setting and meeting student growth objectives, completing “Professional Development Units” and receiving a satisfactory evaluation from their principal.

But not all components of the extra pay are created equal. Teachers get annual bonuses – not added to their base salary – for working in low-income schools or teaching hard to fill positions. Currently, those bonuses total $1,000 per category for each year the teacher remains in that position.

But extra pay for successfully meeting the objectives, training and evaluation requirements become a permanent part of a teacher’s base salary, to the tune of $1,200 per year. This means a teacher can receive an extra $1,200 in base salary for each year her or she fulfills those requirements. This would add $2,400 in salary after two years, $3,600 after three years, and so forth, as long as the teacher kept hitting those targets.

Even if a teacher hit the target one year and then failed the following five years, the $1,200 from the first year would remain a permanent part of that teacher’s base salary. And annual cost-of-living increases as well as other negotiated salary boosts are added on top of that.

The vast majority of ProComp teachers – over 75 percent – meet their objectives and get the salary-building bonuses. Committee members said that did not sound much like the incentive system sold to voters.

DPS has proposed beefing up the true bonus elements of ProComp, while modifying the salary-building elements, particularly in the later stages of a teacher’s career. The district would like to bump non-salary-building bonuses to $3,000. Boasberg said this might still be insufficient to attract and retain teachers – some studies question whether even $5,000 is enough, he said. But it’s an improvement over the $1,000 currently offered.

Even if the DPS proposal were adopted -- unlikely, given the DCTA's objections -- the bonus portion of ProComp would still only be around 20 percent of total dollars.

The two sides seem hopelessly deadlocked for the moment, with no negotiating sessions scheduled until August, when the political atmosphere will be super-heated by the impending Democratic National Convention.

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