By Matt Gleckman

This spring, at colleges and universities around the country, thousands of graduation caps will be hurled into the air—tassels spinning like mini helicopter blades.

Re-1 salary committee representative Dave Mitchell says, however, that few of these graduating seniors will be seeking out jobs as teachers, making employee recruiting for schools a difficult chore.

"According to a National Education Association report, schools can expect a shortage of as many as 2.2 million teachers in the coming years," said Mitchell.

As a result, the Re-1 school board has agreed to add $456 to all columns and steps of the teachers’ salary schedule.

With this salary increase, Cortez, which was previously ranked ninth out of 11 in base pay for schools with similar size and setting, will now be ranked fourth.

"By adding $456 to the salary schedule, our base pay will jump from $23,418 to $23,874," said Mitchell. "This will bring us right up to average with districts such as Alamosa, Canyon City, Delta and Durango and will make it easier for us to compete for quality teachers."

School board member Jaclyn Fisher justified the increase at last Tuesday’s school- board meeting, stating that not only does Re-1 need to worry about recruiting new teachers, the district also have to take care of the ones already on staff.

"We have a lot of great teachers already at the schools who deserve this extra money," Fisher said. "We don’t want them to think that they are unappreciated."

Along with the $456 teacher increase, all full-time staff members (teachers included) will receive a one-time, lump sum of $332 (part-time employees will receive half of this amount) which will be added to the February 2000 paychecks.

Cortez business manager Jim Riffey said the stipend is intended to account for Re-1 changing the salary-negotiation time from the spring to the fall as well as the fact that some non-certified staff members did not receive their pay increases last January.