Southwest Washington Education (K-12)

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Teacher Pay

For those of you who know him Chad Magendaz (chad@magendaz.com) was a Washington State Representative and has spent a fair amount of time dealing with education. He recently shared some information about teacher pay and wrote the following article and has allowed us to share it. What say you?

So much of the McCleary discussion these days has been driven by the big stakeholder groups, the largest being the state teachers’ union.  In light of the barrage of misinformation they’ll be spreading to support their interests, it’s important to arm yourself with some critical talking points on the McCleary proposals you’ll be seeing throughout this session.

According to OSPI’s final report that was released in December, the average WA full-time teacher salary in 2015-16 increased by 4.2% to $68,853. This doesn’t include benefits, which increased 9.7% to $22,994.  So, the average teacher now costs our school districts $91,847!  Given this and the fact that two reports from independent consultants have said that teacher pay is both competitive in most of the state (and with fringe benefits that “appear unusually generous”), there is really no justification for increasing average teacher compensation.  However, we probably should decrease the variance to increase starting salaries (and reduce the number collecting six figures).

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Note: This still also doesn’t fully capture the 3% COLA increase ($231M) and additional one-time 1.8% salary increase ($152M) that we approved for teachers in the 2015-17 budget.

And here’s how this looks in 2015 inflation-adjusted dollars compared to the median household income:

 

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Notes:

  • Above graph is not pro-rated for 180-day school year.  Teachers work 36 weeks per year vs. more typical 48-50 weeks per year, so average weekly teacher salary is actually 50% higher than the median household income.
  • Current per-pupil funding is now $12,652, which is over $300,000 per classroom!

Refs:

Regional Housing Costs

Any McCleary school funding solution needs to recognize that housing costs for school employees vary widely throughout the state.  In fact, the median home price in a school district ranges from $864K to just $49K.  Our compensation system needs to account for this so that we can offer a competitive salary at every location.

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Notes:

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School District Levy Rate Equity

Right now we have a highly regressive system where large school districts with high property values pay less than half the average levy rates. If we move local spending for basic education to the state, everyone pays the same rate. That means property tax relief for most districts, but an increase for districts like Seattle and Bellevue. (However, these areas would get more money back from the state because of their higher regional cost of living, as suggested above.) Overall, it’s revenue neutral, less regressive, and satisfies McCleary.

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Ref:

Armed with these facts, it becomes clear that the most equitable education funding system is where we follow our state constitution, where Article IX, Section 1 requires us to eliminate our dependency on local school levies and pay for basic education exclusively with state revenue.  Furthermore, the uniformity clause in Article VII, Section 1 requires everyone to pay the same state levy rate.  Finally, the state needs to recognize that the actual cost of running a school is primarily driven by labor costs, which differ greatly based on regional factors like localized purchasing power, housing costs, and access to amenities.  In order to attract and retain quality staff at every school, the state needs to fund a competitive salary at every location.

 

– Chad

 

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