School Districts Scramble to Make Good on Promised Staff Pay Raises
Posted on: Monday, 12 May 2008, 21:00 CDT
By HOWARD BUCK
In the tiny Hockinson School District, the budget gap is $250,000.
For Vancouver Public Schools, the shortfall is more like $4 million, officials say. In the Evergreen district, it's at least $1.6 million.
Across Clark County and Washington state, school districts are feeling the pinch of a large cost-of-living pay hike for teachers and other workers, approved by state legislators earlier this year.
The Legislature kicked in more state money to cover the salary increase, but thousands of other workers required by law to get the same raise weren't figured into the formula.
The result: Cost-cutting to balance 2008-09 school year budgets. Reductions in staffing, curriculum materials and other spending are planned. And, in Vancouver schools' case, 26 employee positions were eliminated last week.
"I would say it's extremely painful," said Brett Blechschmidt, budget specialist for Educational Service District 112, who oversees La Center and Green Mountain district finances. The impacts there amount to 1 percent of total budgets - not huge, but each percentage point counts.
Combined with flat student enrollment and steep energy bills, the higher payroll costs and associated boost in pension and medical benefits are taking a toll, officials say.
"Everybody has to figure out a way to deal with it. I don't think anybody's immune," said Mike Merlino, Evergreen district chief financial officer. Merlino expects Evergreen to dodge significant cutbacks.
Headaches
Annual pay raises for Washington's school workers are now mandated by voter-passed Initiative 732, approved by a 3-to-2 margin in November 2000. Salaries were permanently linked to a Puget Sound- area consumer price index.
Several factors have created a serious headache, however.
Immediately in 2001-02, Washington's economy tanked. The state skimped on salary hikes for a few years. Then, given a flush cash reserve from 2007, legislators met teachers union demands and voted to make amends, with catch-up payments starting in 2008-09.
In the 1980s, after a court ruling forced the Legislature to take responsibility for basic education funding, a few dozen districts that paid teachers more were grandfathered into a new state pay scale. Now, all the other districts must include bonus payments to help equalize salaries.
There's been a leveling-off in voter-passed Initiative 728 state money designed to reduce teacher-student ratios, which helped offset COLA costs in past years, officials say.
But, here's the real kicker: The state provides new dollars only to employees covered in the state's rigid funding formula, based on student enrollment. Left uncovered: All teacher aides, janitors, custodians and others supported by local maintenance and operating levies passed by taxpayers.
Union contracts require that all member workers, state-funded or not, enjoy equal salary benefits. And so, districts must use their own money to give all employees the pay hikes.
'Jumps off the page'
The 2008-09 picture: A price index hike of 3.9 percent, plus 0.5 percent in districts not grandfathered into the higher pay scale: a 4.4 percent pay hike, up from 3.7 percent last year. What's more, teachers in most districts will get a catch-up bonus, meaning a 5.13 percent total increase.
"(That's) a pretty big number, and it kind of jumps off the page at some people," Blechschmidt said.
"I think it's great that the Legislature provides an increase," said Evergreen's Merlino. "But when the state increases our pay, it costs us. It's going to make it tougher to put a budget together, no question," he said.
In Vancouver Public Schools, the recalibrated state allocation will pay for just 53 percent of employee COLA hikes. The district is on the hook for the other 47 percent, at a net cost of $4 million, said Steve Olson, chief financial officer.
The big contrast between Clark County's largest districts is that Evergreen contracts out for kitchen, janitorial and other services that Vancouver doesn't, Olson said. That's hundreds more salaries Vancouver must directly sweeten, he said.
Vancouver leaders are rethinking contracted workers. A small start might be scaling back school kitchens, turning to some new "brown-and-serve" food items from outside vendors, Olson said.
The gory details
Parents of special education students are on high alert over cuts in teaching assistant hours and positions. In Hockinson, new curriculum materials are likely on hold.
Local districts will grapple with the gory details in coming weeks, setting their new budgets by July or August. Public hearings are required.
Meantime, frustrated educators are pressing for legislators' action in the face of a persistent, widening funding gap, they say. There's also a joint school lawsuit, now before the state Court of Appeals, on unfunded special education services they provide.
Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver, said legislators know fundamental change is needed. She and colleagues are waiting for recommendations from the basic education funding task force they assigned to find potential solutions by December.
"The definition for basic education is outdated," Wallace said. "There is absolutely legislative recognition that we have underfunded special ed and basic education needs," she said.
Howard Buck covers schools and education. He can be reached at 360-735-4515 or
howard.buck@columbian.com
.
Originally published by HOWARD BUCK Columbian staff writer.
(c) 2008 Columbian. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Columbian
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