Jay Inslee’s plan to hike school employee pay would increase salary and benefit costs for local districts. The added costs could amount to millions of dollars for some school districts, according to the News Tribune. Many school district officials are worried over what the added expense would mean for their budgets.
Frank Ordway, lobbyist for the League of Education Voters, told the News Tribune, “The way the system works, every time you actually do something like pay for a cost-of-living adjustment, you’re actually increasing the cost on local districts.”
Significantly, the added costs to local school districts enhance one of the problems the state Supreme Court criticized years of Democrat-controlled budgets for in the McCleary decision: “School districts are using too much money from local property tax levies to cover the cost of paying staff.” The court stated that those expenses are “largely a basic education expenditure… and therefore the state’s constitutional responsibility.”
As Shift reported, Inslee’s plan seeks 3 percent raises for school employees during the next school year and 1.8 percent raises the following year, along with increased pension benefits, at a cost of $600 million. However, the New Tribune points out that the $600 million would not “pay to extend the raises to the portions of school employee salaries that are paid by school districts, or to school employees whose salaries are paid entirely through local levy dollars.”
The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction estimates that “extending those raises and benefits to all school employees based on their full salaries would cost roughly an additional $100 million above what Inslee’s budget would provide.” Moving forward with Inslee’s education plan would require local school districts to make up the added costs, increasing dependency on local levies.
David Schumacher, Inslee’s budget director, stated that the added funding Inslee’s budget places toward education would “free up (levy) capacity” and allow district to “find a way to cover expenses associated with giving raises.” But, according to state Sen. Andy Hill, that strategy only perpetuates the problem because it does not “address school districts’ overreliance on local levies to pay for basic services, which the Supreme Court also has told the Legislature to solve.”
As Shift previously reported, Inslee is going to great lengths to ignore quite an important part of the state Supreme Court’s McCleary decision in order to satisfy the Washington Education Association (WEA). Contrary to his claims, Inslee’s budget (backed by all too many Democrats) places special interests—not education—at its center.
Let’s call it what it is, A Tax On Us! The citizens of Washington State! Again, this liberal spending from democrats never stops. There is not one person in this state who can honestly say our cost of living will not go up because of this. The spending on the education system in this state is outrageous at every level. Add this to every other progressive idiotic idea out there.