Columbus Municipal School District has paid teachers and staff more than $370,000 in incentives in the first year of the Teacher Incentive Pay Plan.

CMSD Board of Trustee members voted in 2018 to adopt the TIPP program to provide bonuses for faculty and staff members of improving and high-performing schools, as well as bonus incentives for math and science teachers. Those first checks have come in this month.

During a celebration at Joe Cook Elementary Tuesday for district employees who received the bonuses, Superintendent Cherie Labat credited the board for showing the employees how much they value their achievements.

“We value all of our employees and we think that events like this are very significant to continue to enhance the culture,” she said. “… The board of trustees’ progressive mindset in making sure that we value our employees is just very important.”

Faculty and staff members at Stokes-Beard Elementary School and Columbus High School, both of which improved this year in accountability ratings from Mississippi Department of Education, received a combined $181,354.40, while the district’s 54 math and science teachers — 15 of whom are new hires — received $189,000 total.

Unlike state incentives, TIPP provides a bonus for each staff and faculty member, from classroom teachers and cafeteria workers to custodial staff.

“You moved the school,” board president Jason Spears told employees Tuesday. “Grades went up, and we want anyone who has any interaction with the child during the school day to be rewarded for it, and that’s why everyone’s a part of this program.”

Mississippi rates public school districts, as well as individual campuses, on a letter-grade scale — ranging from A to F — based on a number of factors, mainly student performance on end-of-year benchmark exams. CMSD’s TIPP program rewards faculty and staff at campuses that improve letter grades. At schools that increase from an F to a D, certified staff receive $500, teacher assistants will receive $250 and support staff will receive $50. Incentive amounts increase gradually for each letter grade, up to $2,000 for certified faculty at A-rated campuses.

CMSD has maintained a D overall rating for the last two years. However, during the 2018-19 school year, CHS improved from a C to a B, and Stokes-Beard jumped from an F to a B.

CMSD also implemented a program to recruit and retain math and science teachers, all of whom received $3,500 bonuses, or about 9 percent of a beginning teacher’s salary, according to board member Telisa Clay Young.

This school year, the district will offer the same scale for incentives, along with awards for staff at a school maintaining a C grade or higher. If a school maintains a C, certified staff would receive $1,000, assistant teachers would receive $500 and support staff would get $100. Maintaining a B would earn certified staff $1,500, teacher assistants $750 and support staff $250 and maintaining an A would bring those totals to $2,000, $1,000 and $500, respectively.

Spears and other board members said they hope to have similar celebrations for the achieving schools in coming years.

“There’s so much excitement around the program that you can see the inspiration they give other schools that may not have been able to participate this year,” he said. “When we see our scores next October, for this program we’ll have in December 2020, I think there’ll be a lot more schools that achieve a higher level and receive benefits of the program.”

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