It is challenging to recruit and pay teachers to come to our schools especially when teachers have more offers and options than in recent memory. What works for one school may not work for another and pay should be mission-based in any case. A Midwest boarding school pays in the 50^thpercentile for its peers. Are the teachers unhappy? No, and that is because they have a unique and generous benefits package: a country club for staff families, three meals a day, very good housing, free day care, free summer school for staff children, financial planning for teachers, generous retirement, and many other forms of family assistance. Apparently, the only relatively poor total package at this school is for single teachers, who carry the larger coaching burden. However, teacher morale is nevertheless high, and the lower pay is considered a fair trade off for the truly generous benefit package.

Schools today must be more flexible and creative in designing compensation systems, both to be mission specific and to be attractive in the marketplace for both current teachers and those the school may wish to hire. Teachers today have the bargaining power.

Littleford & Associates has been retained by over 3200 schools worldwide to help create mission-based salary, evaluation/growth and benefit systems.