How the Pay Works
The contract dispute and the outsourcing are both arguments about pay, and the words in them (guide, step, column, longevity, stipend, per diem, teaching load, markup) are rarely explained. This page explains them from the district’s own documents, with every number linked. It takes no position on what anyone should be paid.
The agreement between the Board and the West Orange Education Association (WOEA) for July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2025 has not been posted online by the district or the union as far as I can find, and a successor is in fact-finding. Two documents stand in for it here. The most recent WOEA agreement in the state’s public file is the one for 2004-2007, kept by the Public Employment Relations Commission; it is used for structure and for the contract language. For current figures, a union member shared a photograph of the “Teacher Salaries 2024-2025” page of the expired agreement. A photograph passed along in a chat is not a record, so it is used here only after a check against a record: of the 545 base salaries on the reappointment list the Board approved on May 4, 2026, 539 are figures that appear on that page, and the four longevity amounts on the list are four of its five tiers. The six exceptions are single pro-rated or off-guide salaries. The page is treated below as the 2024-25 guide, with that caveat.
The salary guide
A teacher’s base salary is read off a table called the salary guide. Rows are steps and columns are training levels. Steps roughly track years of service, but a step is a row on the table, not a year: a new hire is placed on a step by agreement, movement down the guide is granted year by year, and the 2004-2007 agreement says “Increases on all guides shall be based on meritorious service” and “There shall be no automatic increments or increase in salary” (Article VI.A.4, p. 21). Columns track degrees and credits: BA, BA+15, BA+30, MA, MA+15, MA+30, MA+45, and DR (doctorate) in 2024-25. Finishing a degree or a block of credits moves a teacher across a column. The last step is the top of the guide; from there, the only increases are the across-the-board raises negotiated in each new contract, and longevity.
The 2024-25 guide. Steps 1 through 4 are blank on the page and steps 5 through 18 carry salaries. The lowest figure is $65,893 (step 5, BA); the highest is $127,384 (step 18, DR). The full page, as transcribed from the photograph:
| Step | BA | BA+15 | BA+30 | MA | MA+15 | MA+30 | MA+45 | DR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 65,893 | 66,628 | 69,264 | 70,363 | 74,903 | 80,174 | 82,004 | 86,032 |
| 6 | 67,126 | 67,876 | 70,561 | 71,680 | 76,305 | 81,674 | 83,539 | 87,642 |
| 7 | 67,709 | 68,465 | 71,173 | 72,303 | 76,967 | 82,384 | 84,264 | 88,403 |
| 8 | 68,078 | 68,871 | 71,595 | 72,731 | 77,424 | 82,872 | 84,764 | 88,927 |
| 9 | 68,611 | 69,378 | 72,122 | 73,265 | 77,993 | 83,481 | 85,387 | 89,581 |
| 10 | 69,082 | 69,854 | 72,618 | 73,768 | 78,528 | 84,054 | 85,974 | 90,197 |
| 11 | 69,590 | 70,367 | 73,152 | 74,311 | 79,105 | 84,673 | 86,606 | 90,859 |
| 12 | 70,273 | 71,057 | 73,868 | 75,040 | 79,881 | 85,503 | 87,455 | 91,751 |
| 13 | 70,619 | 71,406 | 74,231 | 75,407 | 80,273 | 85,922 | 87,883 | 92,199 |
| 14 | 71,366 | 72,162 | 75,016 | 76,206 | 81,123 | 86,834 | 88,815 | 93,177 |
| 15 | 73,317 | 74,517 | 78,387 | 79,714 | 84,222 | 89,260 | 91,251 | 98,635 |
| 16 | 77,895 | 82,688 | 87,523 | 88,994 | 93,447 | 98,995 | 101,104 | 106,403 |
| 17 | 87,416 | 93,020 | 98,645 | 100,016 | 105,041 | 110,624 | 112,528 | 116,893 |
| 18 | 96,937 | 103,352 | 109,768 | 111,038 | 116,634 | 122,253 | 123,953 | 127,384 |
Two features of the shape matter for everything else on this page. From step 5 to step 15 the rows rise slowly, by a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a year; the last three steps rise by $5,000 to $10,000 each. And the columns matter more than the steps at the top: step 18 runs from $96,937 with a bachelor’s degree to $127,384 with a doctorate.
Where the staff sit. Placing each of the 539 matched base salaries on the 2026-27 tenured list at its cell: 314 of 539 are at step 18, the top; 24 at step 17; the rest are spread from step 6 to step 16. By column, 222 are at MA+45, 104 at MA+30, 79 at MA, and 38 at BA. The median base salary on the list is $111,038 (step 18, MA) and 332 of 545 are at $100,000 or more. New and non-tenured teachers are listed separately (pp. 33-37) and sit lower. The 2026-27 base salaries on the list are the 2024-25 figures unchanged. That is not an offer by either side; it is what is paid while the agreement that expired on June 30, 2025 has no successor, the last year of the old guide carried forward into a second year. The August 24, 2026 minutes note that salaries “may be adjusted in an amendment should contract negotiations finalize with the WOEA” (p. 10), which is how a settlement’s raises, usually retroactive, would reach these figures. Whether anyone has moved a step since 2025 cannot be seen from one year’s list. In 2006-07 the guide had ten steps and ran from $42,561 to $88,964 (2004-2007 agreement, Schedule A).
Longevity
Longevity is a fixed amount added to salary each year once a teacher has completed a set number of years in West Orange. It is not a step on the guide; it is a separate line, and it is the only service-based increase available to someone already at step 18. The 2024-25 page lists five tiers; the third column is who receives each on the reappointment list the Board approved on May 4, 2026, tallied with a short script:
| Paid years | Amount | Staff on the May 4, 2026 list |
|---|---|---|
| 15 to 19 | $5,612 | 86 |
| 20 to 24 | $7,221 | 169 |
| 25 to 29 | $8,840 | 50 |
| 30 to 33 | $10,471 | 12 |
| 34 and more | $12,465 | 0 |
| Partial year | pro-rated, under $5,000 | 3 |
| No amount listed | none | 225 |
| All staff on the list | $2,280,577.60 in total | 545 |
The list gives amounts, not years of service; the 225 with no amount are presumably below the first tier, but the list does not say so. In 2006-07 there were four tiers (14-18, 19-23, 24-28, 29+ years) at $4,287, $5,517, $6,753, and $8,000 (2004-2007 agreement, Article VI.D, p. 29).
What the table shows. Longevity is 3.8% of the $59,293,333 in salary on the same list, and it sits at the top of the guide: 277 of the 314 people at step 18 have it, 17 of the 24 at step 17, and 26 of the 201 below that. The committee’s October 14 email described “most of our eligible staff receiving roughly $10,000.00 or $12,000.00”; read as rounded figures, those are the $10,471 and $12,465 tiers, which 12 and 0 people receive. The email also said longevity “is not widely provided” in other districts; the New Jersey School Boards Association’s magazine reported in 2025 that about three-quarters of districts provide it (School Leader, October 2025). Both are set beside the records on What the District Said.
Teaching load and the sixth class
The only contract text available here on teaching load is the 2004-2007 agreement (Article V.A.2, pp. 12-16), which sets a high school core-subject teacher’s regular load at “not more than five instructional periods with a maximum of three courses and two supervisory duties”; a teacher assigned six classes gets a second preparation period instead of duties. Beyond the regular load, extra classes are paid by a chart and a formula: for each day the assignment exceeds the regular load, “(teacher’s annual salary) x 1/185 x (appropriate fraction from chart)”. Under that chart a sixth class with up to three different courses pays nothing extra if the teacher also gets the extra preparation period and no duty, and one-sixth of a day’s pay if a duty is assigned instead; a seventh class pays from one-sixth upward. “No teacher shall be compelled to teach in excess of six classes per day.” For special education, “teachers shall not be compensated for additional work load based on an excess number of subjects or courses taught”, but are treated the same as other teachers on the number of classes and preparation periods (p. 16). Covering a colleague’s class during a preparation period paid $33 per occurrence in 2006-07, and no mandatory coverage may leave a teacher with “more than seven periods per day of student contact” (p. 17). Whether these terms survived unchanged into the 2020-2025 agreement is not known here. A high school teacher’s account in October 2026 is that a general-education teacher who takes a sixth class is paid one-sixth extra, while a special-education teacher teaching six is paid nothing for it and would have to take a seventh before the extra pay starts; the account also says most special-education teachers at the high school are teaching six this year. That is an account, not a record, and the agreement itself is what would settle it.
Stipends and extra duty
Coaching, club advising, and similar assignments carry stipends set in separate schedules of the agreement (Schedules D and E in 2004-2007). Routine extra duties have per-diem rates: the May 4 agenda approved “A.M. / P.M. Bus Duty”, “Breakfast / Lunch Duty”, and “General Detention” at “$40.81 per diem” as “the WOEA contractual rates” (agenda attachments, p. 4). None of the 545 tenured staff on the reappointment list has a stipend on that list; stipends are approved in separate resolutions through the year.
Hourly rates
Summer work is paid by the hour, and the 2026 Extended School Year assignments the Board approved on May 4 give the district’s hourly rates for the same jobs side by side (agenda attachments, pp. 57-67): teachers $57.13, paraprofessionals $26.82, nurses $62.89, clerical aides $22.01, and substitute teachers and substitute paraprofessionals at the same $57.13 and $26.82. A paraprofessional hour is 47% of a teacher hour at these rates.
Paraprofessionals
Paraprofessionals (the 2004-2007 agreement calls them instructional assistants) were in the WOEA unit with their own guide, Schedule C: ten steps and three columns (Non-Deg, BA, MA), running in 2006-2007 from $22,101 to $28,437 a year, with longevity of $726 to $1,815 on the same tiers as teachers. The May 4, 2026 attachments contain reappointment lists for certificated staff, administrators, administrative assistants, buildings and grounds, security, transportation, and technology, but no list of paraprofessionals, which is consistent with the decision to outsource the positions that same spring. The $26.82 summer rate above is the only 2026 district figure for paraprofessional pay on a public document found so far.
What a district employee costs beyond salary is pension (the Public Employees’ Retirement System for paraprofessionals, the Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund for teachers), the employer’s share of Social Security and Medicare, and health coverage. A staffing agency’s employee gets the wage and whatever the agency provides. The Superintendent’s April 29 letter put the saving from outsourcing at $3 million a year; which of these lines the figure comes from has not been shown. OPRA-001 asks for the agreement and the bills.
Substitutes and the agency markup
Day-to-day substitutes are paid a per-diem rate, and since 2022 the district has obtained them through EduStaff rather than hiring them directly. Under the January 2022 master agreement, EduStaff is the employer: it pays the substitute and invoices the district for the wages plus a fee of “30.00% of Staff Gross Payroll” for classroom-based substitute staff and 33% for school nurses (Exhibit B). So a substitute paid $110 for a day is billed to the district at $143. The fee rises if employer payroll taxes rise by more than half a percent of payroll, and the district owes $500 if it hires one of the agency’s substitutes onto its own payroll. The agreement’s invoices are to be itemized by job number, person covered, and hours or days worked, in PDF and Excel (Section 4.B and Exhibit A). For 2026-27 the Board also approved a substitute staffing agreement with Sunbelt Staffing on August 24, 2026 (minutes, p. 12).
Whether the paraprofessionals now supplied through EduStaff are priced on the same markup, and at what hourly wage, is what the July 21 “Pricing Schedule Addendum-Exhibit B” would show. It is the first item in OPRA-001.
What is on the table
The union’s account of the negotiation, published to its members on October 5 and reshared on October 14 in answer to the Board’s email (WOEA, “Response to Message from the District”), says the Board’s offer at the October 5 fact-finding session had three parts: “significantly less money than they budgeted”, eliminating longevity “for all new hires”, and freezing longevity “permanently”, so that “all current staff would stay exactly where they are at present in regards to longevity”. It says the salary part was “substantially less” than the Board’s August offer, that “The average salary increase across the state is roughly 3.5%”, and that the parties first met in March 2025, declared impasse in January 2026, met a mediator in March 2026 and a fact-finder on August 3, with a fact-finding hearing set for January 7, 2027. The Board’s email of October 14 does not describe its offer. This is the union’s account; the Board’s own proposal is not public, and the salaries on the May 4 list above are the expired guide carried forward, not either side’s proposal.
On the size of payroll, the Board’s email says “Salaries and benefits represent more than 70% of the district’s budget” and the union answers that New Jersey districts “on average” spend “over 80%”. Both can be true at once, and neither says anything about longevity on its own: on the May 4 list, longevity is under 4% of salary.
What this page does not know yet
- The 2020-2025 agreement’s text: the current teaching-load and coverage terms, the paraprofessional guide, and the longevity thresholds as written (the photograph gives the amounts and years, not the article).
- The 2026-27 paraprofessional wage and markup under the EduStaff addendum.
- What the district paid its own paraprofessionals in 2025-26, in salary and in benefits, which is the other half of the $3 million claim.
- The Board’s actual proposal to the union.
Each will be added here, with its source, as the records arrive.