How much do Kansas City area school districts pay new teachers? Here’s the data

Teachers just starting out in the Kansas City metro face a vast disparity in salary depending on which district they work for.

Missouri teachers are among the lowest paid in the nation, according to the National Education Association. The average starting teacher salary is $33,234 a year, which the NEA ranked as the lowest starting wage in the country. The average teacher salary in the state is $51,557, ranking 47th in the U.S.

In Kansas, the average starting salary is $39,100; the average teacher salary is $53,619.

In Hickman Mills school district in south Kansas City, voters decided to raise teacher starting salaries from $38,000 to $45,000, which will make the school district one of the highest paying districts in the Kansas City metro area.

“I want to be the employer of choice,” Hickman Mills Superintendent Yaw Obeng told The Star. “I want people to say, ‘Hey, I want to be there because they have a great culture and great community support, but also I can have great compensation to support myself and my family.’”

Kansas City Public Schools increased the starting wage for entry level teachers to be one of the highest starting wages in the Kansas City metro.

“We raised salaries across the board in KCPS this year,” KCPS public relations manager Elle Moxley said.

“We know that it has been a really tough time to be in education, and we want to show the value of our employees. We also know that it’s a tough market right now that we are, unfortunately, competing against our neighboring school districts to attract new teachers entering the profession.”

How much do teachers across the Kansas City metro make?

Of 26 school districts around the Kansas City metro, the average entry level base salary is around $40,804. So this would be the average pay for someone entering a district with a bachelor’s degree and a year or less of professional experience.

The average pay for someone with the same level of experience but with more education than a master’s degree (including a doctorate) is $52,280.

Here’s a breakdown of each school district’s starting wage for entry level teachers, according to district data that is linked for each district.

How do districts decide what to pay teachers?

There are a few factors that go into how much teachers make. For most districts, it’s a combination of experience teaching and years of education. If you are a teacher with zero experience and a bachelor’s degree, you will likely get the lowest base salary.

A teacher with a master’s degree or doctorate but without previous experience teaching will likely get a higher base salary. Those salaries usually go up with each additional year of experience.

“Every district has a different philosophy when they build their salary schedule,” Moxley said.

Salary schedules are charts that districts create to show how much a teacher will make based on the years of experience and education they have.

“Some districts, for example, like really high starting salaries, but each year, you only get a very small bump,” Moxley said. “Other districts start people lower, but they really incentivize that education piece like they want to get more master’s-certified teachers.”

This story was originally published August 25, 2022 at 5:00 AM.

Kynala Phillips

The Kansas City Star

Kynala Phillips was a Service Journalism Reporter at The Kansas City Star, where she worked to answer readers questions about the resources and services in the community. She attended the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is originally from Madison, Wisconsin.