The committee engaged in considerable debate about its evolving recommendation regarding raising teacher salaries, which all committee members seem to agree should be raised to attract high-quality professionals. At previous meetings, the committee discussed raising the minimum teacher salary from about $35,000 to around $40,000, which would make Georgia's starting teacher salary more competitive with other states. After preliminary cost estimates indicated that raising the starting salary would be very expensive and would have profound implications on the salaries of existing Georgia teachers, the committee backed away from recommending a number. Instead, the recommendation showed up in the TRR&C report at the Oct. 22 full ERC meeting as follows:

At that Oct. 22 meeting, ERC Chairman Dr. Charles Knapp requested that the TRR&C committee review the recommendation again. The recommendation was edited by ERC staff and showed up in TRR&C material at the Nov. 9s meeting as follows:

Today TRR&C members discussed the tension between the ERC'S movement away from state articulation of teacher salaries and expenditure controls on local school districts and toward block grant funding to local districts from which the districts would pay teachers using locally-developed compensation systems. Several committee members expressed concern about whether the intention of the TRR&C to raise beginning Georgia teacher salaries would actually be initiated at the local school district level. Ultimately, the committee settled on the following, which may change yet again before the next full ERC meeting.

Increase k-12 educational funding which will allow local districts to recruit, retain, and reward the most effective teachers and will allow Georgia to pay the beginning teacher's national average salary to Georgia's beginning teachers.