Because You Just Can’t Get Enough Washington Learns!
Things are clicking right along with Governor Gregoire’s Washington Learns committee. TV Washington has the last meeting of the steering committee streamed on-line; in it, Dr. Bergeson does a nice job of explaining where they want to go. We’ll have a better idea when they start putting out final reports, which should be next month.
A couple of interesting developments:
In their memo to the steering committee the K-12 Advisory Committee has recommended that, because of the money and personnel involved, it should take 6 to 8 years to phase in their recommendations. That’s about the only way that I can see it happening; the up-front money simply isn’t there in the state budget right now, and a lengthy phase-in process would allow for some good priority setting as well.
They’re still talking about capping class size at 15 in grades K-3 and 25 in grades 4-6. I’m ambivalent. A class of 15 would be an incredible thing to have, but the cost involved would be equally incredible.
Consider a group of 60 kids. In most schools that would be split into 3 classes; under the new formula, you’d need four. My district estimates that a teacher costs $65,000 in salary, benefits, and retirement. Then consider that, statewide, there are nearly 300,000 kids in the primary grades. At 20 a class, you’d need 15,000 teachers; at 15 students, we’re talking about 20000 teachers, or a 5,000 teacher difference. That’s an extra cost of $325,000,000 dollars, and it’s certainly more than that because the average class size in the primary grades is more than 20.
An extremely interesting (and very wonkish) wrinkle to the salary debate is the idea of differentiating salary based on the region of the state that you live in. This has long been one of the peeves of the teachers in the Seattle area, who often can’t afford to live in the districts (think Mercer Island) they teach in. Picus released a draft report through Washington Learns in April and used a tool called the Comparable Wage Index to look at what it costs to live in different parts of the state, and surprisingly (at least to me) they found that the highest-cost area was the Tri-Cities, with Seattle a close second. In fact, of the 13 areas they looked at, only four were above average in cost and a couple (Spokane and Eastern Washington) were significantly below.
This is a tough one. It would be awfully hard to live on a beginning teacher’s salary in Seattle (and apparently Pasco, too), but is there a shortage of people looking to fill those jobs? If yes, you can justify the additional pay. If there isn’t a shortage, though, then (from a taxpayer’s point of view) what do you get from a pay bump? Raising everyone’s salary appeals to the unionist in me, but that’s not likely either. I don’t know what the ideal is—that’s why I’m not on the committee!
A couple of interesting developments:
In their memo to the steering committee the K-12 Advisory Committee has recommended that, because of the money and personnel involved, it should take 6 to 8 years to phase in their recommendations. That’s about the only way that I can see it happening; the up-front money simply isn’t there in the state budget right now, and a lengthy phase-in process would allow for some good priority setting as well.
They’re still talking about capping class size at 15 in grades K-3 and 25 in grades 4-6. I’m ambivalent. A class of 15 would be an incredible thing to have, but the cost involved would be equally incredible.
Consider a group of 60 kids. In most schools that would be split into 3 classes; under the new formula, you’d need four. My district estimates that a teacher costs $65,000 in salary, benefits, and retirement. Then consider that, statewide, there are nearly 300,000 kids in the primary grades. At 20 a class, you’d need 15,000 teachers; at 15 students, we’re talking about 20000 teachers, or a 5,000 teacher difference. That’s an extra cost of $325,000,000 dollars, and it’s certainly more than that because the average class size in the primary grades is more than 20.
An extremely interesting (and very wonkish) wrinkle to the salary debate is the idea of differentiating salary based on the region of the state that you live in. This has long been one of the peeves of the teachers in the Seattle area, who often can’t afford to live in the districts (think Mercer Island) they teach in. Picus released a draft report through Washington Learns in April and used a tool called the Comparable Wage Index to look at what it costs to live in different parts of the state, and surprisingly (at least to me) they found that the highest-cost area was the Tri-Cities, with Seattle a close second. In fact, of the 13 areas they looked at, only four were above average in cost and a couple (Spokane and Eastern Washington) were significantly below.
This is a tough one. It would be awfully hard to live on a beginning teacher’s salary in Seattle (and apparently Pasco, too), but is there a shortage of people looking to fill those jobs? If yes, you can justify the additional pay. If there isn’t a shortage, though, then (from a taxpayer’s point of view) what do you get from a pay bump? Raising everyone’s salary appeals to the unionist in me, but that’s not likely either. I don’t know what the ideal is—that’s why I’m not on the committee!
posted by Ryan at 12:00 PM
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