Copperas Cove ISD rewards 88 top-performing teachers with state-funded pay raise

Copperas Cove ISD

By: Bella Popadiuk

COPPERAS COVE, Texas (KXXV) — Copperas Cove Independent School District administrators celebrated 88 teachers across 10 campuses who received state-funded pay raises, placing them among the highest-performing teachers in Texas.

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Copperas Cove ISD rewards 88 top-performing teachers with state-funded pay raises

The educators earned a special state designation and a pay raise through the Teacher Incentive Allotment, or TIA program. The designations come with state-funded pay increases that are locked in for five years. In Copperas Cove ISD, those raises total more than $570,000 a year.

For sixth grade science teacher Natasha Morgan, a 14-year educator and 2004 Copperas Cove graduate, the recognition was an emotional moment.

"It was just the shock of it, I wasn't expecting it," Morgan said.

Morgan received the "Exemplary" designation, which is the one of the highest ratings for teachers in Texas.

"There can be a misconception that the focus is on the money, it's really not. The focus is exemplary," Morgan said.

The TIA program was created through House Bill 3 in 2019 to reward results and help address teacher shortages by keeping the best educators in the classroom.

Deputy Superintendent Amanda Crawley said the program is designed to retain top talent.

"The teacher incentive allotment was designed to help teachers get to a six-figure salary and keep teachers in the classroom and not just any teacher but our highest performing teachers that are producing the best results and getting the most growth from their students," Crawley said.

"That reaction was amazing to see our teachers were so excited and they were just beyond beyond excited for, um, that additional bonus that they'll get in their paycheck and it's unusual in education that teachers get bonuses for their work," Crawley said.

For Morgan, a single mother of two, the recognition comes full circle and makes a huge impact on her family.

"Me being a mom and I'm a single mom of two, anything that helps, um, as much as I put into them, I put into my two at home and it helps it whatever little bit helps," Morgan said.

Crawley told me the program has significantly helped with teacher retention in the district.

"Our teacher retention is very high. Um, we went from having 150 to 200 teachers each year, turning over to now we have less than 50 new teachers this school year when we started new teacher orientation at the beginning of the year," Crawley said.

However, Crawley also told me an unexpected side effect of the TIA program is that the district is finding it harder to fill managerial and administrative roles. Because teachers are paid so well, they are less incentivized to take promotions.

"We have some administrator shortages right now and so we are fully staffed with our administrators, but when we have openings and vacancies, we're really having to, um, advertise and search for candidates, whereas once we used to have a very deep applicant pool in those roles. Now our applicant pool is a little bit less and so we're having to really make sure that we are, um, working to, um, you know, recruit in those areas now instead of so much in the classrooms," Crawley said.

This marks Copperas Cove ISD’s third year in the program. Now, more than 40 percent of its teachers have earned TIA designations.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

Below is a list of educators awarded this year:

Clements/Parsons Elementary School