Public School Teacher Salaries in Fairfax, Virginia

Public School Teacher Salaries in Fairfax, Virginia

Recently I reviewed the Fairfax County Public School pay schedules for its classroom teachers. Fairfax County has one of the biggest school districts in the country.  The published schedules have pay for steps that have pay for each year of experience in the Fairfax County schools. The pay goes up from step to step to reflect individual seniority.

If a teacher moves up year by year, presumably from a satisfactory performance rating and also gets the cost of living adjustment for the adjusted pay schedules, then a teacher that stays in the system will get pay increases that raise their buying power, a.k.a. real wage. For example, a teacher fresh out of college at step one in 2020 received pay of $50,000. If five years later they were at step five in the 2025 cost adjusted pay scale they would earn $68,145, which provides a 10.7 percent increase in their real wage. That also equals 6.4 percent annual percent increase, more than the inflation rate for the period.

However, the story changes for those that enter teaching in later years or who enter the system with experience in other school systems. As the years have gone by the new pay scales do not keep with inflation. If I compare the step 5 salary in 2020 with the step 5 salary in 2025 for someone coming into the system, their 2020 was $58,492. For someone entering the system as a step 5 in 2025 their salary would be $63,005.  The 2025 salary is a cost adjusted salary drop in the real wage of 12.52 percent over the 2020 salary.

The decline also applies the more years of experience someone brings into the system. Someone at step 20 in 2020 received a salary of $79,469. Someone at step 20 in 2025 would receive a salary of $88,111. To keep up with inflation and keep a stable buying power the salary would need to be $97,856 in 2025. The $88,111 is a 9.96 percent decrease in the real wage for someone entering the system at step 20.

The pay scales are designed to encourage teachers to stay in the system and they will advance over time if they do, but since all new teachers have started at a systematically lower real wage year by year, they are advancing from a continuously lower real wage from the years before. In Fairfax County, Virginia, the public school teachers sink farther and farther down the economic ladder.