Education Week - January 23, 2019 - 17

Cash for Teacher Pay Must Compete With Other Priorities
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

WHERE'S THE MONEY?
Even if governors and state lawmakers promise pay
raises to teachers, local school boards and district
administrators often have competing priorities
that keep some of that money from finding
its way into teachers' pockets.
Getty

ers have been wanting to jump on
that," said Michael Griffith, a senior
school finance analyst for the Education Commission of the States.
"But when they put more money
into education, they're not seeing a
jump in teacher pay. Or they're seeing it in some districts and not in
others. In most instances, you supply the money to districts and hope
they spend it the right way."

A Sticking Point
Teachers across the nation have
staged massive protests to demand
that states spend more money on
textbooks, technology, school construction, and reducing class sizes.
But increasing teacher pay has
proven both costly and difficult to
achieve.
Negotiations between teacher
groups and district officials have
turned especially hostile this year
in states where governors last year
gave hundreds of millions more dollars to schools, earmarked in some
cases-at least rhetorically-for
teachers.
Teachers in seven Washington
state districts went on strike at the
beginning of this year after district
administrators said they couldn't
afford to deliver on Democratic
Gov. Jay Inslee's promise to boost
teacher pay with the $1 billion in
extra money provided by the state
to end a long-standing lawsuit that
was partly over teacher pay.
In California, where districts
mostly have free rein to spend state
money as they'd like, thousands of
Los Angeles teachers walked off
the job last week after district officials refused to bump their pay by
6.5 percent, decrease class sizes, and
add nurses, librarians and counselors. California has, since the recession, provided districts with more
than $19 billion in extra money,
though the state's K-12 spending has yet to reach pre-recession
spending levels.
And teachers in Chicago and Denver last week threatened walkouts
over their pay. Both Illinois and
Colorado provided districts with
hundreds of millions more dollars
last year.
In Arizona, Republican Gov. Doug
Ducey spared his re-election bid
and ended a five-day statewide
strike last year after he said he'd
set aside more than $644 million
to boost teachers' pay by an average of 20 percent by 2020. Teachers,
he said, would receive a 10 percent
raise this fall.
But that money, all of which was
placed in districts' general funds,
was spread out in uneven ways,
with teachers in various districts
receiving anywhere from no raise
at all to, in one instance, an 18 percent raise, according to an analysis
by the state's department of education. Many finance experts fear
that sort of uneven pay schedule
across the state could exacerbate
the teacher shortage in the state's
most rural areas.
Some Arizona districts have told

their teachers they won't be able to
afford to give them 20 percent raises
by 2020.
"We knew when he created this
proposal that it was just a promise
that was going to create problems
and inequity down the road," said
Rebecca Garelli, a 6th grade science teacher at Sevilla West Middle
School in Phoenix. Garelli received
a 5 percent, one-time pay bump,
about $87 in each paycheck, which
the district could rescind next year,
she said. "What he gave was more of
a promise than a reality."

Flush With Revenue

ARIZONA:

In most
instances,
you supply the
money to the
districts and
hope they
spend it the
right way."
MICHAEL GRIFFITH
Education Commission
of the States

After a five-day teachers' strike,
Gov. Doug Ducey last year promised to
provide teachers with a 20 percent pay
raise by 2020, with teachers receiving
a 10 percent raise this school year.
But some estimates show that many
of the raises across the state were
uneven with some teachers only getting
5 percent raises this year while others
received a 15 percent raise. Ducey
this year proposed to put much of a
$900 million surplus into savings,
while many teachers across the state
have said districts need even more
money to stave off a teacher shortage.

CALIFORNIA:
California slashed dozens of spending
requirements when it created a new
funding formula in 2013, allowing
the state's many school districts to
effectively spend money from the state
however administrators would like.
The state also required that districts
by 2020 pay up to 19 percent of its
pension contribution. Because of
rising fiscal demands across the
state, many districts have put much
of the $20 billion in extra spending
on pensions and other obligations.
Teachers in Los Angeles have demanded
a 6.5 percent raise, smaller class sizes,
and more support staff. The district
says it can't afford all those things and
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has
proposed to pay part of the district's
pensions to stave off other cuts.

WASHINGTON:
Teachers in seven districts went on
strike earlier this school year when
district administrators refused to
provide teachers with the sorts of pay
raises they envisioned when the state
provided $1 billion more over the next
four years as part of a court ruling
involving teacher pay. Many of the
districts are going to voters this spring
to ask for more money to avoid having
to make millions of dollars in cuts.
SOURCE: Education Week

A large portion of states this year
are flush with cash as revenue from
natural resources and property and
sales taxes have rebounded.
Some governors, such as in Arizona, California and Colorado, have
said in recent weeks that they want
to place much of that surplus money
into savings. Others, including in
Arkansas, Missouri, and Virginia,
have said they want to spend much
of the surpluses on their public
school systems.
Seventeen states, according
to the ECS, have statewide pay
scales, which, if adjusted, can assure that teachers across the
board will receive pay raises. That
includes Oklahoma and West Virginia, where statewide strikes last
year led to the state's entire pay
scale being adjusted by thousands
of dollars. (Most states have a minimum pay amount that districts
can't go under.)
Last week, legislation was proposed in Texas, which has a statewide pay scale, that would provide
every teacher in the state with a
$5,000 raise. It would cost the
state $3.7 billion over the next two
years.
But in the rest of the states, districts can mostly spend money however they'd like, a staple of America's local control mantra.
Perhaps aware of the issue's sensitivity and complexity, governors
in their state of the state addresses
have been especially careful when
describing how they'll increase
teacher pay. And they have been
quick to point out that teacher pay
is outside of their control.
Indiana's Republican Gov. Eric
Holcomb said last week that he
will use $140 million of his budget
to pay down the district's pension
debt and then heavily suggested
that local school boards, which
decide teacher pay, should use the
saved money in pension costs to
give their teachers a $1,200 pay
increase.
"Just like paying off your mortgage frees up money in your personal budget, this state investment
will save all local schools $140 million over the biennium with continued savings thereafter," he said in a
statement.
Some governors have gotten creative in order to bypass the messy
district negotiation process and
dodge the political heat over pay.
Some states, such as North Carolina, have tried to issue bonus

checks directly to teachers, and others, like Arizona, have published
pay increases on state departments'
website in order to spur public
accountability.
In 2012, the Washington state supreme court's McCleary ruling said
that the state was not holding up its
end of the deal to provide students
with a constitutionally adequate
education. The court ordered that
the state provide all-day kindergarten, expand access to pre-K-and
increase teacher pay.
While the state managed to accomplish the first two tasks relatively quickly, it took years to pull
off the teacher pay order.
Last year, after threats from the
state's supreme court to shutter the
state's schools, Washington scrapped
its statewide teacher pay scale,
instituted a new carbon tax, and
rejiggered the state's local property
taxes in order to provide schools
with $1 billion in new funds.
It was a political victory for Inslee,
who recently announced that he will
run for U.S. president. But it caused
havoc in the state's 294 districts,
all of which this summer went into
negotiations with local unions.
"What kind of pay raises are possible?" the state's union said in
a press release distributed to its
members last spring. "For certificated staff, 15 percent or more. For
classified education support professionals, pay increases as high as
37 percent. That's right-doubledigit pay raises are possible for all
of Washington's K-12 public school
employees."
The union incorrectly said in the
press release that the funds were
"earmarked" for teacher salaries.
District administrators pointed out
that the funds were actually placed
in general funds and if they provided even 20 percent raises for its
teachers and certified staff, the districts would go into debt.

Continued Tensions
At the beginning of this school
year, teachers in seven districts in
the state went on strike, delaying
the start of school.
"With the McCleary decision,
we felt it was now time to get the
raises, and not try to spread them
out in three years," said Lynn
Maiorca, the president of the Vancouver Education Association, referring to the Vancouver, Wash., district's original proposal to teachers.
While the union managed after
the four-day strike to land a raise
for its teachers, the district said it
now faces an $11 million shortfall
this fall and will have to go to voters
in the spring to ask to raise taxes or
risk program cuts and layoffs. Negotiations with the district's support
staff are ongoing.
"Even after the McCleary investments, the state continues to underfund K-12 education," Steve Webb,
the superintendent of Vancouver
said in a statement directed at the
district's staff. "Now is the time for
us to come together to put pressure
where pressure belongs-with our
elected leaders in Olympia."

EDUCATION WEEK | January 23, 2019 | www.edweek.org | 17

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - January 23, 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - January 23, 2019