Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Wednesday released his top priority for 2020: A five-year, $225 million plan to increase compensation for veteran teachers.

This plan would create a path for teachers to earn up to $63,000 by the 2024-25 school year. Presently, teacher salaries hit a ceiling at $50,000, although it is up to individual districts to make up the difference to provide higher salaries. In Coeur d'Alene, for instance, a teacher who has taught for 15 years and holds a bachelor's degree with at least 70 credits of continued education can make $66,483 with longevity bonuses of $1,650, according to the salary schedule for fiscal year 2020.

“It has been a constant theme of mine for the year, month and two weeks that I have been governor that we have to be competitive on teacher pay,” Little said during a briefing with reporters before the bill was introduced.

The House Education Committee quickly and unanimously voted to introduce the bill.

This bill would create a new top tier of the career ladder salary law. Little’s bill would add an “advanced professional compensation” rung above the career ladder’s existing residency and professional rungs.

The original career ladder was established by former Gov. Butch Otter in 2015 to attract candidates to education with a five-year, $250 million program to increase teacher pay.

According to Idaho Education News, now that the career ladder has been implemented and Little has secured additional funding to increase minimum teacher salaries, this is his plan to improve the competitiveness of salaries for experienced, highly effective teachers. But to get their share of the increase, teachers will need to obtain a new advanced professional endorsement, which will place them in the first cell of the new advanced professional rung on the career ladder.

If passed, this bill would increase state funding for teacher salaries by $30 million for the 2020-2021 school year. By 2024-2025, the career ladder would pay the new state minimum of $41,000 for new teachers and $63,000 at the top of the advanced professional rung.