New agreement to restore Flint teachers’ salaries with level of experience

Flint, MI— A new settlement agreement will focus on restoring Flint teachers’ salaries to their level of experience, according to Flint Community Schools (FCS) Superintendent Kevelin Jones and United Teachers of Flint (UTF) President Karen Christian.

Jones and Christian held a joint press conference during a school board meeting on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, to share details of the new agreement, which 96% of UTF teachers voted to accept and the Board of Education approved on April 4, 2024.

Christian said that while the most experienced teachers at the top of the pay scale were not automatically restored to a salary equal to their experience, they will receive an increase next year, which benefits teachers whose salaries have been frozen since 2014. 

“That will put every single teacher as of the beginning of next year at the step where they are to be with relation to their experience in the Flint area schools,” she stated.

Under the new agreement, prospective teachers will be hired at a salary equal to their experience level.

“At this point no one will be frozen anymore, so they can hire teachers in at their level of experience,” said Christian. “It allows us as the more experienced teachers in the district to be able to train some of the new teachers coming in, so that we can give them our experience to be able to understand how to work in inner city schools and how to create those relationships with students and with parents.”

Additionally, the new agreement will return the district to a traditional calendar instead of a balanced calendar for the 2025-26 school year.

Jones said now that the new agreement has been reached, the district will focus on repurposing buildings, rightsizing, and most importantly, enrolling new students. 

“Yes, we do have building issues, but we also need new enrollees to come back to Flint Community Schools,” he said. “And I think that sometimes we’re focusing on just the closures or the vacant properties when we also need to focus on enrollment campaigns… and if we can get our scholars to come back to us… then that is a whole other story of how the landscape of Flint Community Schools will look.”

The new agreement was reached over the course of 16 hours while the teachers were on Spring break. It came after months of teachers protesting the board and eventually organizing a districtwide sickout. 

Jones and Christian both agreed that while the months-long process was a “rollercoaster,” it was crucial for the board to hear from so many of the district’s teachers.

“Some of those teachers that came in and bared their stories here and told us everything about what was going on would never have done that before this moment, but they felt that this was the moment and the time was now,” said Christian. “And after they were able to tell their stories, they felt that they were finally heard, which is a big thing.”

The new agreement has not yet been made available to the public in its entirety.