Every teacher lane change and new-hire placement on your step and lane salary schedule, ruled course by course against the agreement, cited, priced and approved by two people
Lane changes decided in days, not weeks, with every unit tied to its transcript line.
See one case, screen by screen ↓Step and Lane Salary Placement sets where a teacher sits on a district's step and lane salary schedule, for new hires and every lane change. Agents read the transcripts, foreign credential evaluations, prior-district letters and clock-hour records, rule on each course and year against the bargaining agreement with the article cited, and price the retro pay; an HR analyst prepares the change and the payroll supervisor approves it before payroll moves.
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Almost every district pays teachers from a step and lane salary schedule printed in its bargaining agreement: steps down the side for years of service, lanes across the top for education — BA, BA+15, BA+30, BA+45, MA, MA+30, Doctorate. Two decisions set a teacher's pay for the life of the job: the salary placement of a new hire, which depends on how many prior years count, and every teacher lane change, which depends on which new units count. A placement the district cannot prove becomes an overpayment an auditor recovers; one that shortchanges a teacher becomes a grievance.
Today both are read by hand. An HR analyst opens official transcripts from several colleges and checks each course against the agreement — upper division or graduate only, earned after the degree, grade C or better, prior approval outside the credential area, quarter units converted — then reads prior-district letters and counts days against the contract year, converts district clock hours to credits, and works out the retro pay to a deadline. The requests arrive in a wave between September and November. Step and Lane Salary Placement puts eight agents in front of that reading, so the analyst spends the day deciding and the payroll supervisor approves with the article and the transcript line on the same screen.
Estimated split of a typical lane-change request's working days, by hand and with the agents, from the moment the request is complete; the 'after' column comes to about two days, the design goal. Our arithmetic, kept modest.
Eight agents read transcripts and letters, apply the agreement and price the retro pay; an analyst prepares and payroll approves.
Arturo Saldívar teaches grade 7 mathematics in Marlow Bay Unified School District. On September 24, 2026 he asked to move from BA+30 to BA+45 with 18 new units; his last official transcript arrived on November 13, which started a 30-day decision clock to December 13. Here is his file, screen by screen, in the working solution.
214 placement requests are open. Overnight the agents read 63 files and priced 41 changes; 27 need Nadia today and 9 across the office are inside 3 days of their decision clock. A banner says the electronic transcript exchange was down from 5:10 to 7:52 AM, and the 12 transcripts that arrived late were read at 7:55 AM.
LC-2026-0917 is 2 days from its 30-day decision clock — Arturo Saldívar, BA+30 to BA+45.
The 2026–27 certificated salary schedule fills the screen: steps 1–30 and seven lanes. One pin marks where Arturo is paid today, step 7, BA+30 at $78,412; the other marks where the evidence places him, step 7, BA+45 at $81,960. The arrow between them reads +$3,548 a year, and the unit counter shows 30 units on file since 2023 plus 15 accepted now: 45 of 45.
A teacher on the phone asks about the MA lane. Nadia clicks step 9, MA, $88,704, and the agents answer above the grid. Both pins stay where they are.
To be paid here, Arturo would need a conferred master's degree (Art. 14.1) and 2 more years of service (step 8 on July 1, 2027).
Five courses are accepted, each with its article and transcript page; STAT 430 from a quarter-calendar university counts as 3.0 semester units under Art. 14.3. ART 101, Introduction to Ceramics, from Brandvale Community College, is rejected under Art. 14.2(b) with confidence 0.99: a lower-division course, and outside his credential area without prior approval.
Lower-division units do not count — 100–299. The analyst can count it anyway only with reason SP-07 and a note.
Nadia checks the agent rather than redoing it. The Brandvale official transcript, received November 13, opens at page 2 with the Summer 2026 ART 101 line highlighted and the course level reading lower division. Birth date and ID are redacted.
Arturo's Licenciatura en Matemáticas, in Spanish, sits beside the course-by-course evaluation that calls it a bachelor's degree in mathematics, awarded June 27, 2014. That date is where every post-BA unit is counted from, and every course on his request comes after it.
The original is never replaced by a translation; the equivalency comes from the evaluator, not the agent.
Each monthly warrant rises from $6,534.33 to $6,830.00. Four warrants, September to December, were paid at the old rate, so the retro pay is $1,182.68 to September 1: the request was complete on November 13, before the November 15 deadline in Art. 14.5. The retro is under the district's $5,000 line, so two signatures are enough.
Nadia prepares the change at 10:14 AM with reasons SP-01 and SP-02; she cannot approve it. Gerald approves at 10:31 AM, the payroll system confirms PC-77120 at 10:32 AM, and the notice is released to Arturo at 10:33 AM.
Arturo's page shows every step from his request to his paycheck, each course counted or not with its article, and $1,182.68 of back pay. He asks why ceramics did not count; the answer cites his college's transcript key and Article 14.2(b), and he can still ask for a second look.
You still reach 45 units without it, so your lane change is not affected.
The trail holds the approval, the payroll confirmation and the notice, Nadia's preparation and her view of the foreign evaluation, and each agent's reading with the articles it applied. Nothing can be edited, and the grievance pack exports from here.
The same lane change, seen by the people who carry it — what their day looked like, and what it looks like now.
Eight agents read transcripts and letters, apply the agreement and price the retro pay; an analyst prepares and payroll approves.
Runs one request end to end — transcripts, evaluations, lane rules, retro pay, then a person — and keeps the 30-day decision clock and the payroll cutoff.
Reads official transcripts and lists every course with its number, level, units, term, grade and institution, cited to the page and line, using the college's transcript key for course levels.
Reads foreign credential evaluations and original diplomas, and shows the original beside the English with the U.S. equivalency and the date of award, citing both.
Applies the agreement's lane rules to every course in order — level, date after the degree, accreditation, grade, subject area and prior approval, unit conversion — and cites the article behind each decision.
Reads prior-district letters, adds the days served in each school year across districts, and credits a year only where the 75% rule allows.
Converts district clock hours to units at the agreement's rate, applies the cap per lane, checks prior approval and banks the hours left over.
Prices the old and new cells, lists every warrant paid at the old rate, applies the deadline rule for the effective date, and works out the retro pay.
Builds the grievance pack and the audit pack, and prepares the season report, from the files and the trail.
Prepares with a reason; payroll approves. The agents propose; a named person decides.
The assistant answers from the files and the agreement, cites what it used, and opens the screen that shows it.
Why was Introduction to Ceramics rejected?
ART 101 is a lower-division course: the Brandvale Community College transcript key marks 100–299 as lower division, and Article 14.2(b) counts upper-division and graduate units only. It is also outside his mathematics credential with no prior approval. Without its 3 units Arturo still has 45, so BA+45 stands.
Price the retro pay for Arturo Saldívar
Step 7 moves from $78,412 on BA+30 to $81,960 on BA+45. Each monthly warrant rises by $295.67, and four warrants, September to December, were paid at the old rate: $1,182.68 retro to September 1, because the request was complete on November 13, before November 15.
Which teachers are paid in the wrong cell?
Last night's check compared all 2,900 payroll cells with their files and raised 7 differences: 4 teachers paid above what the evidence supports, $12,618 a year, and 3 paid below it, $10,746 a year owed. Nothing changes in pay until a person decides.
Why is Priya Natarajan placed at step 9?
Three letters cover nine school years, and eight count. In 2019–20 she served 104 days in one district and 76 in another, 180 in all, and Article 13.3 counts the year across districts. 2022–23 was 128 of 182 days, 70%, under the 75% rule. Eight years place her at step 9 on the MA lane, $88,704.
13 screens from the working solution, on its sample data. Pick one to see it large.
The thresholds and the agreement's lane and service rules are settings, versioned with the agreement, and a change shows its effect on open files before it applies.
| Setting | Default | Choose from |
|---|---|---|
| Who approves a payroll change | Payroll supervisor | Never the preparer (locked) |
| Third signature on retro pay | Over $5,000 — assistant superintendent | Stepped from $1,000 to $10,000, with this season's approved changes it would have caught |
| Service year share (Art. 13.3) | 75% of the contract year | Stepped from 50% to 90%, previewing the new-hire step; needs a signed agreement amendment and re-prices every open file |
| Clock hours (Art. 14.4) | 15 hours per unit, capped at 6 units | Hours over the cap carried forward |
| Decision clock (Art. 14.6) | 30 calendar days of a complete request | Escalation 3 days before |
| Agent confidence floor | 0.90 | Below it, a person reads the page; reason codes required on every override (locked) |
| Personnel documents | By role, principals never | Every view logged (locked); birth dates and identifiers redacted |
| Retention | Employment plus 5 years | Grievance hold |
Every figure is labelled: a target the solution is built to, an estimate, a typical published result, or a proven one.
Sources: Washington State Auditor's Office, audit of one school district's salary placements (reported 1999): $263,525 of state funding computed as overpaid over two years · National Center for Education Statistics, number of US public school districts · "target" = design goal, measured in the live solution · "demo" = seen in the working solution, on its sample data · "typical" = published figures · "estimated" = our arithmetic, kept modest. Marlow Bay Unified School District, the colleges, the credential evaluator, the agreement and the people named on this page are fictional — characters and sample data in the working solution.
Step and Lane Salary Placement sets where a teacher sits on a district's step and lane salary schedule, for new hires and every lane change. Agents read the transcripts, foreign credential evaluations, prior-district letters and clock-hour records, rule on each course and year against the bargaining agreement with the article cited, and price the retro pay; an HR analyst prepares the change and the payroll supervisor approves it before payroll moves.
It is the teacher salary schedule most US districts print in their bargaining agreement: steps for years of service down the side, lanes for education across the top, such as BA, BA+15, BA+30, BA+45, MA, MA+30 and Doctorate. A teacher's pay is the cell where the two meet, so the evidence behind both the step and the lane decides the salary.
That depends on your agreement, and the solution applies yours. In the working solution's sample agreement, Article 14.2(b) counts only upper-division and graduate units, so a 100–299 course is rejected, with the transcript line and the article shown. An analyst can still count a course with a reason code, and that override is on the record.
The Service agent reads each prior district's signed letter and adds the days served in each school year, across districts when a teacher moved mid-year. In the sample agreement a year counts at 75% of the contract year, up to 10 years at hire; a year below the line is shown with its share, and counting it anyway is an exception for the assistant superintendent.
At the rate your agreement sets. In the sample agreement 15 district clock hours make one unit, capped at 6 units per lane, and the hours over the cap carry forward. Outside hours without prior approval do not count, and the analyst can route a request for approval after the fact.
Your agreement's deadline rule decides the effective date. In the sample agreement, a request made by October 1 and complete by November 15 is paid back to September 1; the Retro pay agent lists every warrant paid at the old rate and the difference owed, and the payroll supervisor approves it with the change.
Yes. The agents read, rule, price and draft; they never write to payroll or decide a file. An analyst prepares every change with reason codes, the payroll supervisor approves it and can never be the preparer, retro over $5,000 needs the assistant superintendent too, and the nightly placement check never changes pay on its own.
The Agentic Solution Engine builds and deploys it from your requirements and documents — your bargaining agreement, your salary schedule and a sample of past placement files — and it goes live once every quality gate has passed. We will walk you through it on your own files first.
Every case reaches its committee complete, on the criteria in force, every letter tested.
1-min demoFaculty Activity ReportingFaculty confirm a prefilled year in minutes, with every line tied to its source.
1-min demoFaculty Search & Hiring ComplianceEvery screen-out reason tied to the posting, and no equivalency request left unread.
1-min demoWe'll run Step and Lane Salary Placement on your agreement and a sample of your own lane-change files.