I wrote last week that in 2014-15, our district had hired so many new teachers that almost one in five teachers (18.3 percent) in our School District were first and second year teachers with very little or no real classroom experience.

The state’s Education Dept. has just released new data for the school year 2015-16.

(2015-16 1st 2nd Year Teachers at Each School)

Even though this latest data is almost two years old, it does show a disturbing trend in the increased hiring (22.3 percent) of first and second year teachers.

In some cases, at a couple of individual schools, the percentage was even more concerning. The Middle School had 28.3 percent (over 1 in 4) of its teaching staff with little or no real experience. At Farragut, that ratio had increased from 20.7 percent (1 in 5) in 2014-15 to 34.5 percent, or 1 in 3 teachers on the school staff.

 Careful What You Wish for

In 2012, under previous superintendent, David LaRose, the School Board embarked upon a plan to spend down our reserves by “investing in” employee salaries with one-time money from the Reserve Fund.

After spending over $16M on District salaries over the past five years, what results do we have to show?

One result is that our average district salary went from 44th to 41st when compared to the other 48 unified school districts in L.A. County. Hmmm.

The School Board also decided to offer teachers a $20,000 early retirement incentive, which, by the way, could also increase a retiree’s pension.

I can only guess that the Board’s $20,000 incentive was too lucrative.

Now our children’s education is suffering for it with the hiring of so many new and inexperienced teachers. Our low average salary puts us at a distinct disadvantage when teachers compare us to other districts.

All these million-dollar increases, of course, only add to the bottom line we taxpayers are having to pay to shore-up the State Teachers’ Retirement System, CalSTRS.

Mr. Laase may be contacted at GMLaase@aol.com