Sturdy management doesn’t all the time imply having the loudest voice—it’s about figuring out when to step again and let others converse up.
As chief human sources officer for the 50,000-student Charleston County faculty system of eight districts in South Carolina since 2010, Invoice Briggman repeatedly raised the difficulty of instructor pay throughout faculty board conferences.
“I’m all the time going to ask till the day I stroll out of the district,” he advised a board member in 2022, undeterred by the member’s laughter at his persistence.
However driving dwelling that day, Briggman realized the struggle for higher instructor pay wanted the voices of academics.
That realization resulted later that 12 months within the Instructor Compensation Job Drive, a coalition of educators who started talking in school board conferences to share their private tales about how a lot they earn, which properties they’ll and may’t afford, and once they final obtained a increase.
The strategic shift in advocacy yielded outcomes virtually instantly.
For the 2019-2020 faculty 12 months, Charleston County’s beginning instructor wage was just below $40,000—nicely above the state minimal of $28,000 on the time, however far under what many educators stated they wanted to dwell anyplace close to their faculty constructing.
Now, beginning pay is poised to leap to roughly $64,000. Veteran academics have seen related beneficial properties, with their salaries rising by tens of 1000’s of {dollars}, and pay will increase now proceed over 40 years of service as a substitute of stagnating after lower than 30 years.
Briggman, 60, doesn’t declare sole credit score for these beneficial properties, acknowledging contributions from academics, the chief monetary officer, superintendent, and the college board, which has turned over virtually totally since Briggman’s advocacy started.
Nevertheless, observers say Briggman’s contributions at every stage of the method have been essential. Over time, Briggman has helped his colleagues, bosses, and staff alike see elevating instructor pay not merely as a technique to preserve staff completely happy and keep aggressive, however to meaningfully enhance the classroom expertise for college students.
To Briggman, the maths is easy: Lecturers who can comfortably dwell the place they need and afford their payments, he says, could have extra psychological and emotional power to direct towards enhancing kids’s lives.
“I’ve sat in a room with different educators and different HR of us, they usually all agree, we have to pay academics extra. However they finish the dialog with, ‘We didn’t get into training to get wealthy,’” Briggman, a 2025 EdWeek Leaders To Study From honoree, stated. “I simply have to go searching the room and say, ‘We additionally didn’t go into training—our academics didn’t—to dwell in poverty or not be capable of purchase a house in our group.’”
His advocacy emerged within the wake of the nationwide RedForEd motion in 2018, wherein educators in a number of states walked out of school rooms to demand extra funding in public colleges from lawmakers. Educators in lots of states have seen substantial beneficial properties since then, however instructor pay stays a headline subject in training coverage, with states from Maine to Montana considering necessary wage will increase.
Henry Tran, a College of South Carolina affiliate professor of training management who teaches HR programs for training directors, says extra districts ought to comply with Charleston’s instance.
“I attempt to inform them, ‘Take into consideration how a lot cash you’re dropping by the fixed turnover. Wouldn’t it not make extra sense to pay them a little bit extra as a substitute?’” Tran stated. “It appears like they did that [in Charleston], which is de facto spectacular.”
Discovering drive and keenness for recruiting academics
Briggman, 60, grew up in Orangeburg, a small city roughly 50 miles south of Columbia, the place his mom labored as a nurse and volunteered on the native highschool. Typically, he’d stroll into his biology class and discover his mother serving to.
After getting a bachelor’s diploma in human relations, Briggman began managing worker advantages for a business actual property agency, however rapidly grew disillusioned with sitting behind a desk all day.
To remain energetic, he began volunteering in colleges and loved it a lot that he enrolled in a grasp’s diploma program in greater training administration, later switching to Ok-12 to change into a college counselor. The Charleston district employed him to assist college students with profession paths in 1999, and he moved over to HR quickly in 2004.
Early on, one notably hectic summer time with lots of of instructor vacancies sparked his ardour for recruitment.
Briggman overhauled the hiring course of, empowering principals to interview candidates with out prior approval from his workplace, utilizing color-coded spreadsheets to trace progress, and recruiting educators from midwestern states like Michigan to faucet into the surging provide of newly minted educators there.
On one go to to a Hampton Inn in Ann Arbor, Mich., Briggman and his workforce have been shocked to search out dozens of job seekers lining as much as attend a session. That they had anticipated solely a handful of individuals.
“I used to giggle and say, ‘I may loosen up in September and take a trip,’ however recruitment for academics during the last 10 years is 12 months out of the 12 months,” he stated.
Constructing belief and momentum for change in instructor pay
Throughout this era of widening the district’s candidate pool, Briggman started noticing points that finally grew to become central to the instructor pay job pressure work.
Within the early 2000s, Charleston emerged as a lovely vacation spot to dwell and work, inflicting dwelling costs to skyrocket, however stayed aggressive with comparable properties on the coasts of Florida or California.
Many new academics within the district have been pressured to take second jobs, like bartending, to make ends meet. Briggman even debated discouraging his niece from changing into a instructor due to the monetary struggles he noticed.
“One instructor stated, ‘I can’t afford to go to my hair stylist, I’ve to do one thing, I can’t dwell like this,’” Briggman remembers.
Satisfied that the established order wanted to vary, Briggman took on this subject as a central part of his job.
Even so, it took time to persuade academics and others within the district that he was dedicated.
Patrick Martin, a highschool English instructor within the district, spent a lot of the 2010s advocating for higher working situations for his career.
When he heard concerning the group that finally grew to become Briggman’s full-fledged job pressure, he was initially reluctant to become involved.
He additionally had reservations about working with Briggman due to the connotation of the ‘HR’ in his job title.
“My preconceived notion of HR was that it was of their finest curiosity to get essentially the most certified staff for the least quantity of sources,” he stated.
However the vary of individuals actively taking part within the conferences helped win Martin over. Briggman needed to raise rejoinders to the district’s established order from educators like Martin, who was a part of a number of teams that served as advocates for space academics within the absence of authorized public-sector unions within the state.
“To me, that each one sort of spelled out, that is any individual who’s actually trying on the broad image of what it means to retain and recruit academics,” Martin stated. “That was the primary indicator that this was greater than only a photograph op.”
Martin stated he respects that Briggman constructed relationships throughout the district, together with with faculty board members, principals, and instructor teams that have been typically ignored by prime leaders.
“Typically in roles at central workplaces, we’re not as considerate about how we will proceed to interact with the first stakeholders we serve,” stated Anita Huggins, the district’s superintendent who has labored with Briggman for over 20 years. “He’s masterful at that.”
Tips on how to preserve instructor salaries on the forefront
Briggman’s job pressure collected survey responses from the district’s 3,800 academics, adopted up with discussions in small-group settings, and labored to interact as many individuals as attainable in conferences about instructor pay.
What they noticed, Briggman stated, was unattainable to disregard.
Briggman strategically oriented the duty pressure solely round problems with pay, resisting makes an attempt to shift discussions to less expensive perks or one-time bonuses.
“When a lender or an condominium advanced is your wage to determine whether or not you may afford the hire, a $5,000 bonus doesn’t think about,” he stated. “That’s a one-time pot of cash, it’s not a real repair.”
The Charleston County colleges have a bonus over some lower-wealth districts within the state with smaller tax bases, Briggman stated. Then again, that additionally means wage ranges that may match the price of dwelling in rural areas of South Carolina don’t come near the wants of Charleston-based staff.
Typically, the duty pressure members made proposals that he noticed as financially unfeasible, given his administrator-level window into the district’s broader finances constraints, however he inspired job pressure members to maintain advocating.
When eight of the 9 faculty board positions turned over in 2022, Briggman seized the chance to teach them on how the district works and what it wants—together with a continued deal with instructor pay.
How a daring wage overhaul retains educators within the classroom
Putting that steadiness—supporting staff whereas prioritizing the pursuits of the district—is the core of profitable human sources administration, Tran from the College of South Carolina stated.
In South Carolina, districts should provide salaries not less than as beneficiant because the state-mandated wage schedule with 28 steps, every for a 12 months of employment.
The schedule for this faculty 12 months begins at $47,000 for first-year academics with solely a bachelor’s diploma and capping at $61,000 after 28 years. Nevertheless, the state doesn’t require the Charleston district to offer academics a increase as soon as they’ve handed 28 years and change into eligible for the state pension. These veteran educators have an incentive to retire early.
The results of that coverage in Charleston, Briggman stated, had been that essentially the most skilled and extremely efficient academics have been leaving the district though that they had years’ value of educating left to supply.
Not lengthy after Briggman’s job pressure shaped, the college board moved so as to add 12 steps to the district’s pay schedule, permitting academics to earn raises by means of 40 years of service.
Earlier than the change, academics stopped getting raises after 30 years of service, and their salaries have been frozen between $62,000 and $81,000, relying on their expertise degree.
Now, 30 years of expertise in Charleston nets academics between $85,513 and $107,142. By the point they’ve served for 40 years, these salaries will develop to between $96,767 and $121,726.
No different district within the state affords annual will increase that far right into a instructor’s profession. Solely 12 of the state’s different roughly 80 public faculty districts have a step schedule that extends previous 30 years.
The Charleston faculty board even utilized the step schedule retroactively to the primary day of the instructor’s contract. That meant long-serving Charleston academics obtained a catch-up verify value 1000’s of {dollars}.
This 12 months, Briggman and the committee targeted on boosting early-career instructor salaries and enhancing pay schedules for different sorts of staff, like instructor assistants.
Karen Lockerman, a particular training instructor at Minnie Hughes Elementary College in Charleston, appreciates that her current pay will increase haven’t been accompanied by tax will increase, and that the paraprofessionals who do important work for her college students haven’t been left behind.
“Is that this sufficient to dwell in our space with out having to have one other job or a roommate?” she stated. At the very least for her, “the reply continues to be not but, even with the rise. But it surely’s higher and transferring [in] the precise course.”
A couple of years in the past, earlier than the duty pressure’s work bore fruit, Briggman had begun considering retirement. Now, he’s as energized as ever.
“I advised the committee, if this is among the final issues I do earlier than I go away the district, it’s going to be to get instructor pay up,” he stated.
