After more than a decade of receiving meager raises as a teacher in Galveston ISD, Lindsay Haney concluded she needed to become a principal if she wanted to make more money to support her two young children.

Haney spent every Sunday for two years taking online classes to earn a master’s degree in administration leadership and picked up occasional managerial responsibilities — only to realize she did not want to stop teaching.

“I like the spark of the classroom, seeing things clicking for the students,” said Haney, who teaches media arts. “The moment they figure it out, the ‘aha’ moment, I love it. I love seeing their work come to life.”

Haney briefly contemplated a career change until she learned that Galveston ISD’s highest-performing educators could earn thousands of dollars more starting this August through the new Teacher Incentive Allotment, a legislative change hailed by Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders as a method of raising top teachers’ salaries to nearly $100,000.

For the vast majority of Houston-area teachers, though, the possibility of making six-figures remains at least three years away, according to records obtained from the Texas Education Agency, blunting the immediate impact of the landmark school finance overhaul passed in 2019.

The records show only a few of region’s largest school districts plan to gain access to Teacher Incentive Allotment funds before the 2023-24 school year at the earliest, the result of a lengthy process that districts must complete before receiving the money. The districts first have to develop a comprehensive teacher evaluation system — a potentially fraught process given long-standing opposition by some educators to performance rating models — and receive approval for their plan from the Texas Education Agency.

“We definitely want educators and local districts to have a lot of time to work together, to decide whether or not to implement the program,” said Monty Exter, senior lobbyist for the Association of Texas Professional Educators. “But this isn’t just slow. It’s a glacial pace.”

State lawmakers added the TIA to last year’s school finance bill for several reasons: to reward the state’s best-performing educators; entice strong teachers to work in high-poverty neighborhoods; provide an incentive for districts to implement pay-for-performance models; and attract top talent to the profession.

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Under the TIA, districts can earn an additional $3,000 to $32,000 in funding for each highly rated educator, depending on a teacher’s rating and poverty levels of students attending each campus. At least 90 percent of funding must go toward teacher pay at the school where a ranked educator works — though state law does not mandate that high-performing teachers receive all of the funding they generate.

Rules still being written

Texas teachers earned an average salary of about $54,100 in 2018-19, about $6,000 more than they received a decade ago. A poll of about 1,150 Texans released last month by the education advocacy nonprofit Raise Your Hand found 70 percent of respondents believe teacher salaries in their community are too low, compared with 2 percent who said salaries are too high.

“From a staff recruitment and retention perspective, it could be a game changer,” said Harmony Public Schools CEO Fatih Ay, who hopes to use TIA funds to keep more math and science teachers from defecting to higher-paying private sector jobs.

As a first step toward receiving approval for the incentive funds, districts were asked earlier this school year to submit a letter of intent indicating whether they planned to participate in the system. Districts already employing a pay-for-performance model were told they could access TIA funds as early as the 2020-21 school year, while districts without one were advised they needed to complete a three-year process.

Several districts, nearly all of which enroll fewer than 15,000 students locally, notified TEA officials that they planned to seek TIA funds for the upcoming school year. They include all five of the region’s largest charter school operators — Harmony, IDEA Public Schools, International Leadership of Texas, KIPP Texas and YES Prep Public Schools — and Galveston ISD, Klein ISD and Stafford MSD.

Only one larger Houston-area district, Spring ISD, aims to receive TIA funds starting in 2021-22. Aldine, Alief and Goose Creek ISDs are targeting 2022-23. All of the region’s remaining large districts opted for 2023-24.

It is unclear whether those districts will earn immediate approval for TIA funds. State education officials still are writing rules for judging whether to approve evaluation systems.

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However, districts that receive approval for the 2020-21 school year likely will gain a short-term hiring advantage, allowing them to offer additional compensation to teachers in a competitive market. Among traditional districts in Greater Houston, the highest-paying ISDs typically offer about $5,000 more in annual salary than the lowest-paying ones. Charter operators typically pay less than ISDs, but the added funding could allow them to pull close to or ahead of traditional districts.

Ball High Principal Joseph Pillar said the ability to offer incentive pay could entice higher-performing teachers to stay in Galveston, which struggles to retain staff due to the island’s high property values. Several Ball High teachers have left in recent years to work closer to their homes in Alvin, Dickinson and Clear Creek ISDs, Pillar said.

“I’m excited to see how it works out,” Pillar said. “The only thing I’m timid about is I don’t want to lose morale. We’re in this together, we all work together, we write the curriculum. I don’t want people to get to, ‘He got (the money), why didn’t I?’”

HISD ‘pushing forward’

Concerns about the fairness and validity long have trailed teacher evaluation systems, which teacher unions often oppose.

State officials also are expected to mandate that rating systems partially rely on student performance data, such as state standardized test scores or district-issued assessments. Critics of tying teacher ratings to student performance argue the practice gives teachers incentives to focus on rote test prep, rather than personalized instruction.

In Houston ISD, district administrators have started discussing those concerns internally, while also recognizing the benefit of accessing tens of millions of dollars in added money for some of the 11,000 teachers.

“The district is pushing forward on that, but we have a lot of work to do between now and 2023-24 to get this moving,” said Glenn Reed, HISD’s interim chief financial officer.

Some education and legislative observers also worry that Texas lawmakers will not continue to fund the TIA if hundreds of districts gain approval starting in the mid-2020s. In Dallas ISD alone, district officials expect to bank about $28 million in TIA money for the upcoming school year.

Exter, whose organization has voiced skepticism in the past about some teacher evaluation models, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about the long-term prospects for the allotment.

“I think if it’s well-done and fully funded — two big ‘ifs’ — it absolutely has the ability to compensate educators in a way they should be compensated, and to impact teacher retention and teacher assignment patterns,” Exter said.

For Haney, the potential to boost her salary through the TIA is enough to keep her teaching in a Ball High classroom for another year, close to the students who inspire her.

“I’m just lucky now because I really was dreading the future,” Haney said. “I’m really excited about next year — and I hope I’m one of the top teachers.”

jacob.carpenter@chron.com