Georgia officials are hoping to lessen the state’s shortage of math and science teachers by sweetening the pot for those just starting their careers.
By the end of the month, 3,100 of the state’s newest math and science teachers will receive $1,461 to $6,577 through an incentive plan put into law in 2009 and funded for the first time this year.
Ashley Shaver, a second-year science teacher at Gwinnett County’s J.E. Richards Middle School, said the extra money coming her way is “welcome and exciting. … Times are hard, and everybody’s scrimping.”
The incentives – costing the state $12.3 million this year – are supposed to help entice and retain public school math and science teachers. They target newer math and science teachers in grades six to 12 by offering a first-year teacher the equivalent of a six-year teacher’s salary and narrowing the pay gap for teachers in between.
But with the economic downturn forcing spending cuts, including unpaid furlough days for teachers, lawmakers didn’t fund the incentives until earlier this year – well after the school year had started and long after then-Gov. Sonny Perdue sounded the alarm that in 2008 Georgia colleges produced only one physics teacher.