Teacher pay unfair say Sammamish school districts
July 9, 2008
By J.B. Wogan
State formula favors some school districts
In late June, Sammamish’s Doug Eglington traveled to Olympia to tackle two educational issues rankling school districts across the state: salary schedules and levy lids.
Eglington represented the concerns of the Lake Washington School District at a June 20-21 meeting for an educational lobbying group called the Washington State School Directors’ Association.
His basic gripe? The state legislature’s current funding formula for districts across the state is unfair.
In January, the Washington State School Directors’ Association might take some form of Eglington’s proposal for salary schedules to Olympia legislators.
In the past, bills addressing the base salaries issue have reached Olympia, but never come up for a vote.
Rep. Glenn Anderson (R-Issaquah/Sammamish) co-sponsored a bill in 2007 that sought to equalize salaries for school district employees. The bill died in committee without a vote.
Anderson said he had no plans to introduce another next year, in part because the state Legislature has appointed a Basic Education Task Force to resolve the teachers’ salaries question.
Anderson said he has introduced similar bills in Olympia for the last four years, each of which died without a vote. He suggested that conflicting needs - health care vs. education vs. transportation - have led to a stalemate where each problem never gets addressed.
Anderson’s colleague from across the aisle agreed.
“I hope they can come up with a solution, I really do, because we have to come up with something,” said Rep. Larry Springer (D-Redmond/Sammamish).
Springer said legislators from Eastern Washington have resisted changes to the statewide base salaries, for fear that new teachers would gravitate to the western part of the state.
In the meantime, school districts throughout the state use the inequities in base salaries to gain a competitive edge in hiring new teachers and certified staff, according to Eglington.
“I’d almost call it a bidding war between districts in terms of what we offer in salaries,” said Eglington.
The state Legislature sets a standard base salary - it was $32,746 for the 2007-08 school year - for all certificated teachers and school administrative staff. This is the minimum a district can offer an entry-level instructor with a bachelor’s degree for a given year. The salary derives from something called “staff mix factors,” which take into account the cumulative experience and education of a staff member.
But when the state Legislature set the base salary schedule in the late 1970s, it allowed certain districts to maintain higher base salaries. Out of 295 school districts, 34 have can offer slightly more money for entry-level positions.
Example: For the 2008-09 school year, the Issaquah and Lake Washington School Districts could offer teachers a base salary of $32,746 while the Everett School District could offer $34,612, the highest in the state.
Anderson has a rough estimate for how much it would cost the state to equalize the base salaries: about $500-600 million. In this scenario, all base salaries would match Everett’s.
“Yes, they’re big numbers,” said Anderson. “But as a percentage, there would be no budget stress to actually resolve it.”
Faced with a competitive disadvantage while hiring new employees, school districts like Lake Washington and Issaquah dip into revenue raised by local property taxes to pay higher salaries.
Here’s conundrum No. 1: The state Legislature intends for that revenue to be spent for enrichment programs such as new technologies instruction and special education. Higher salaries mean less money pouring into those non-basic education programs.
Conundrum No. 2: The district can only collect so much from local property taxes. The state Legislature limits a district’s ability to levy funds - a so-called levy lid.
Even if local taxpayers were willing to approve higher levies to match salary discrepancies between districts, they can’t.
To compound the issue, people like Eglington are calling foul play on levy lids, too. While the state Legislature caps a districts levying capacity at 24 percent, 91 of the 295 school districts can levy at higher percentages.
Local school levies collect additional funds based on a formula that derives a percentage of certain combined state and federal revenues. One factor in that formula is a district’s salary base. Thus, a lower base salary would drop a district’s potential revenue raised from local levies, too.
The Issaquah School District has a levy lid of 24.97 percent and Lake Washington’s is 24.89 percent - both above the statewide 24 percent. But the Seattle School District has a levy lid of 32.97 percent. Such a disparity in levy lid percentages translates into millions of dollars.
Assuming Issaquah taxpayers approved taxes at the Seattle levy lid, the Issaquah School District could raise an additional $9,902,117, according to Issaquah School District projections. With Mercer Island School District’s levy lid - 33.67 percent - Issaquah could raise an additional $10,674,922, according to those projections.
It wouldn’t be enough, according to Sara Niegowski, director of communications at the Issaquah School District.
Educational needs in Washington are systemic, Niegowski said. The state Legislature designed the current funding formula in an era before WASL requirements, the Internet and special education. So far, no one knows how to solve the bigger issues, she added.
In the meantime, educators focus on at least evening the playing field.
“It’s not going to fix the whole system,” said Niegowski, “but it would help.”
Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com.
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