How do you locate a database of teachers’ contracts for all school districts in Connecticut?

How do you locate a database of teachers’ contracts for all school districts in Connecticut? Describe your search strategy and summarize differences between Hartford versus any suburb.

Locating a database of teacher’s contracts for all school districts in Connecticut is not as difficult to do as one might think.  I simply inputted “teacher contracts Hartford” into Google’s search engine and the fourth link down was entitled, “Find & Compare Districts – ConnCAN Teacher Contract Database.”  The website, http://teachercontracts.conncan.org/, had information on every school district in Connecticut, from teacher salaries to workday length to the number of sick days that teachers are given.  While the average salaries of teachers in Hartford is comparable to that of the statewide averages, there were some disparities between Hartford teacher salaries and the salaries of teachers in Connecticut’s suburbs.  For example, on the website, you can find out a town’s average teacher salary by checking off the box to the left of the town’s name.  For the search I conducted, I checked off the box to urban Hartford while I also checked off the box to Westport, a more affluent Connecticut suburb.  What I found is that the average Hartford teacher salary is substantially smaller than that of their suburban counterpart.  In Westport, for example, a first-year teacher with a BA makes about $47,000 a year.  A fifth-year teacher brings in around $55,000 a year.  Meanwhile, in Hartford, a first-year teacher with a BA makes slightly less than $43,000 a year while a fifth-year teacher makes just over $50,000 a year.  Even more troubling, the max amount of money a teacher can make in Hartford with a BA is $ 66,000 a year while the max amount of money for a teacher in Westport is $77,000, a whopping $11,000 disparity. So, while you may think that the teacher willing to work in the states most struggling schools would be valued over other teachers, it’s actually just the opposite in Connecticut.  Go figure!