DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – In Wayne County, some preschool programs are offering signing bonuses as much as $2,400 for new teachers to fill staffing gaps.

As more and more students have joined the Michigan school system after the 2021 Great Start Readiness Program which added 22,000 additional children to Pre-Schools, schools are struggling to find teachers without offering larger incentives to join.

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Wayne RESA, the county education agency responsible for paying the bonuses hopes to enroll roughly 300 students waitlisted for the Great Start Readiness Program, according to the Detroit Free Press. Kidz World Learning Center under a campaign of Wayne RESA launched a classroom last year to help address preschool classroom shortages, but only lasted a year.

That room shut down after a year because the center couldn’t find teachers, said director Nahla Musa. She worries that the pandemic labor market, with its rising wages and fierce competition for workers, may have led some early educators to leave the profession for other sectors, the Detroit Free Press said.

The most recent data provided by the Great Start Readiness Program (GRSP) State Evaluation Annual Report shows that in Wayne County, lead GSRP teachers made a median of $42,320, or 15% less than the median kindergarten teacher at $49,959. And that 15% gap was among the narrowest in the state — teachers in many counties could expect at least a 30% pay bump if they shifted from working with 4- to 5-year-olds.

According to Salary.com, those numbers have risen slightly with a median salary of $55,918 as of December 27, 2022 for the average Public School Teacher salary in Michigan, but the range is between $46,699 and $68,191 per year depending on factors such as “education, certifications, additional skills, the number of years you have spent in your profession.”

Just this past July, schools older than pre-kindergarten have also begun offering signing bonus incentives, or other incentives to try and replace retiring and relocating teachers among other careers. Grand Rapids Public Schools also offered sign-on bonuses in the ballpark of $1,000 to teachers, social workers, psychologists, nurses and counselors.

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New GRSP teachers in Wayne County would only be paid signing bonuses in the first year, and earn half up front but the rest in June. New hires also cannot have been a part of a GSRP Wayne County program in the last 90 days or more. Lead teachers would earn a $2,400 bonus, associate teachers would earn $1,200, and classroom aides would receive $600.

As of mid-November, roughly 100 GSRP classrooms were missing 1 or more teaching team members according to RESA.

“Where are they?” Kidz World Learning Director Nahla Musa said. “I went to school with some of them. Teachers should be teaching.”