Top paying states: Alaska, New Jersey and New York.
Staff and wire reports

AUGUSTA – Beginning Maine teachers’ pay ranks near the bottom of the national list, according to a report by the American Federation of Teachers.

The ranking, released Thursday, says pay for new teachers in Maine ranks 48th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia. The AFT is a union representing 1.2 million teachers.

A beginning teacher in Maine makes an average of $24,054, ahead of only South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana.

In Lewiston last year, a beginning teacher earned $25,387. A beginning teacher in Auburn earned $24,200. According to the Maine Department of Education’s Web site, the average Lewiston teacher earned $41,816 and the average Auburn teacher earned $36,880.

Maine teachers’ average pay, $37,300, ranked 38th in the nation.

“Neither of those rankings, average or beginning, is something to be proud of,” said Robert Walker, president of the state’s largest teachers’ union, the Maine Education Association. He added that Maine teachers’ pay has fallen significantly in the last decade.

Pam Stockmar, president of the Augusta Education Association, said low pay makes it hard to attract new teachers and keep current teachers from leaving the field for better-paying careers in private industry.

“We have a teacher who has been here 30 years whose daughter has worked at MBNA for five years, and she makes more money than he does,” said Stockmar.

Walker said Maine teachers’ pay ranked as high as 28th in the mid-1980s when state government had made a commitment to increase teacher salaries. He said that commitment waned when the state economy nose-dived in the early 1990s.

A Waterville High School physics teacher took the figures in stride, saying he simply enjoys being a teacher in Maine.

“The top quality physics students are going to get snatched up by private industry at much more than the $24,054 that a public school can offer,” said Mike Gosselin, a 33-year teacher. “For me, the pleasure of teaching is derived from things other than my checkbook.”

The AFT’s study is based on figures from the 2001-2002 school year.

Nationwide, the average teacher salary was $44,367, a 2.7 percent increase over the previous year. The average beginning teacher salary was $30,719, up 3.2 percent.

The report contrasted the nation’s average teacher salary with those in other white-collar occupations such as $54,503 for a midlevel accountant, $74,534 for a computer systems analyst and $76,298 for an engineer.

The three top-ranking states in first-year teacher salaries are Alaska, $36,294; New Jersey, $35,311, and New York, $34,577.