A Parent’s Perspective: It’s Back To School Time — Or Is it? A Guest Editorial
Labor Day weekend is upon us and that usually means it’s time for the kids to go back to school. But if you’ve been paying attention you might have heard that many local SW Washington school district teachers are on strike and school may not start at its scheduled time. What’s going on? Why are there all these strikes? As the parent of a Camas middle-schooler I had the same questions and have recently done a little research on the issue. So read on if you want some more information.
The issue goes back to the McCleary lawsuit against the State of Washington which charged that the state failed to adequately fund basic education in violation of a Constitutional mandate. The problem arose over the years with many districts increasingly relying on local levies to increase funding for education, resulting in inequality across districts. The state Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs and ruled that basic education must be fully funded by state money, not local money. The legislature’s fix to the problem was to provide an additional $2 billion in funding for basic education distributed across the state’s 295 school districts and to place a cap on local levies, which can now only be used for enhancement and not basic education (eg, teacher salaries).
A few school districts that did not have levies and had low levels of local property tax funding for schools have received large increases in funding under the McCleary legislation. As a result teachers in a few of these underfunded districts have already negotiated large salary increases, in some cases up to 20%. However, many other districts don’t fare as well under the new McCleary funding model. Particularly hard hit are districts that have historically relied on larger local levy funds.
The local Camas community highly values education and through its strong support for local levies the Camas School District (CSD) has been able to develop a great school system. In fact, the schools are what have brought many people and businesses to Camas. The most recent levies were four-year levies passed in 2017 to support maintenance/operations and technology and these provide a number of benefits to students. Levy funds of about $17 million make up about 20% of CSD’s overall annual budget. http://www.camas.wednet.edu/about-csd/budget-funding/levies/
Unfortunately, the impact of the McCleary legislation will substantially reduce CSD’s levy funds. CSD will receive a nominal increase in funding from the state starting in 2018-19, which levels off and there will be an overall decrease in funding for the 2019-20 school year as levy funding continues to decline (see table). Adding to the chaos is that the state provided little guidance to local districts, essentially leaving them on their own to figure out how to handle the drastically changed funding system.
The state teacher’s union (Washington Education Association) saw the lack of state guidance and the new statewide funding plan as an opportunity to attempt to negotiate large salary increases on behalf of their members. The WEA held up as examples of what was possible districts that were able to provide 20+% salary increases due to the large windfall those districts received under McCleary. The local teacher’s union, led by Mark Gardner, appears to be pushing for double-digit salary increases, but has not publicly provided information about their requested increase. During the negotiations the district initially offered a 3.1% increase, raised it to 4%, and finally offered teachers a 5.7% increase in 2018-19 followed by another 2.3% increase in 2019-20. The teacher’s union rejected all of these offers and voted to strike. The district then requested mediation and here we are with less than a week before school starts wondering if the kids will be going back to school.
Camas has wonderful school teachers and even though they are among the highest paid in the state I would gladly do my part to help pay them more (we voted for the bond and levies and do what we can to help our school), but unfortunately the issue is not as simple as the slogan “support the teachers.” There are difficult funding and budgetary realities that we must contend with, especially in light of the future major loss of levy funding. The district administrators are mandated by law to sustainably fund the schools and, unfortunately for Camas, the McCleary legislation has not been kind to our district. Large double-digit salary increases could potentially bankrupt the district or require future teacher layoffs or staff cuts as well as cuts to other services, including: special education, library, health, and extracurricular activities; all things that help make our district great.
Everyone in the Camas school district is dedicated to helping our kids learn and it’s disheartening to see this come down to a strike and the acrimony it is creating in our district. I support the teachers, but I also support our dedicated administrators who I believe truly have our district’s interests at heart as they try to responsibly manage our district’s limited funds. Hopefully they can reach a suitable agreement and all the kids can return to school and continue learning. In the meantime, please call your local state legislator, tell them about the problem they have created in our school district, and ask them to fix the McCleary mess they have created.
By Ken O’Day, a Camas parent
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Hit the nail on the head with this article. Maybe the teachers and their supporters will read this!
Washington is one of twelve states where superintendents are now the highest paid government employee in the country, earning compensation in the mid-six-figure range. It’s often ten times what their teachers get paid and often double the salaries governors get to run entire states. The rising pay for school supers is happening as states and school districts are slashing budgets.
Corporate CEO compensation and bailouts are being scrutinized by Wall Street, shareholder activist groups and institutional investors like pension funds. School superintendent pay is often not subject to the same rigorous oversight. CEOs are paid by private companies — school superintendent compensation is paid for by taxpayers.
Superintendent pay deserves an extra level of public scrutiny.
Our teachers deserve better!
Evergreen’s Previous superintendent’s exiting salary (not including benefits), $375,064
VSD superintendent 17/18 salary (not including benefits) $311,619
Evergreen’s current superintendent 17/18 salary (not including benefits) $232,523
BGSD superintendent 17/18 salary (not including benefits) $221,993
Camas SD superintendent 17/18 salary (not including benefits) $171,480
Ridgefield SD superintendent 17/18 salary (not including benefits) $171,152
Hockinson SD superintendent 17/18 salary (not including benefits) $133,193
http://data.kitsapsun.com/projects/wa-school/
Governor Jerry Brown – California, $173,987
Governor Kate Brown – Oregon, $98,600
Governor Jay Inslee – Washington, $166,891
Governor Andrew Cuomo – New York, $179,000
(Governor salary as of June 2018)
https://ballotpedia.org/Comparison_of_gubernatorial_salaries
John, a few points in response: (1) You say superintendents receive mid six-figure salaries, but you fail to provide one example of that (mid six-figures would be around $500,000); (2) You say they “often receive 10 times” the salary of teachers, but again the superintedent salaries you quote are well below 10 times the average teacher salary in those districts (more in the range of 2-3 times); (3) You contrast superintendent pay with CEO compensation, which you describe as invovling “rigorous oversight” – when the fact is that the average CEO receives receives 271 times the average worker salary https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/22/heres-how-much-ceo-pay-has-increased-compared-to-yours-over-the-years.html – would you be happy to have superintendents earning that ratio? (4) Finally, we can debate all day whether or not superintendents are overpaid. My personal opinion is that Jeff Snell deserves every penny of his salary which is a mere 2.25 times the average CSD teacher salary. But that issue is a red herring in the context of the current salary negotiations, which has more to do with whether the new state funding model sustainably supports significant double-digits increases in teacher salaries. Highlighting administrator pay is just an attempt on the part of the unions to politicize the issue. Even if we were to cut administrator pay in half and redistribute it to teachers it would make a trivial difference in terms of solving the actual problem we currently face.
Thought-provoking.
You might consider a cup of coffee with some legislators. Some misconceptions reside in your representation of this complex issue.
Such as?