Washington Education Week #6: The Calm Before the *hitstorm

The Washington State Legislature gets back to work tomorrow. It's expected to be a bipartisan affair where tough budget decisions are made in a spirit of teamwork and cooperation, where the needs of the individual are pushed aside so that the needs of the state can be fully shriven to the benefit of the citizens that make the Evergreen State great.

Nah, just kidding! Think crabs in a bucket, or out-of-control toddlers. Think out of control toddlers in a bucket with crabs. That's actually probably pretty close to the reality.

Item #1: School District Consolidation and Levy Equalization. It's looking like Rep. Sam Hunt of Olympia is the guy who's going to be the grinch that finally brings this conversation to the forefront. The money quote:

"It's a terribly hot issue. But I don't think we can justify having 295 school districts," Hunt said. "If you want to save money, I think this is one way to do it. It sets up a commission."

Rep. Hunt's proposal to get it done is HB2616, which would establish a commission to look at cutting the number of school districts in the state from the current 295 down to 150. Looking it over I like how he's written it--there's a lot of public involvement, and the bill just commits to the conversation, not the eradication of school districts. Whenever it comes up before the House Education Committee (and given that Rep. Dave Quall, the committee chair, is a co-sponsor, you can bet that it will) I'll have to try to make the trip over and watch the proceedings.

Another piece to keep an eye on is the School District Cost and Size Study that the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) has started work on this year. Their final report is due in either May or June, which means that this is an effort that could really work hand-in-glove with what Rep. Hunt is proposing.

The practical impact, then, is that Eastern Washington newspapers like the Yakima Herald-Republic can host superintendents and write angry editorials until they're blue in the face, but if small school advocates aren't willing to look at every cost--including the cost of their very existence--then they're ceding the moral high ground to folks like Governor Gregoire who can now go out and say "Look, I wanted to save levy equalization, but we can't poor more money into those districts without knowing that it's worth it, yadda yadda I hate this budget."

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Item #2: If the State Doesn't Want to Raise Tuition, Let the Colleges Do It To Themselves. An interesting idea wandering around Olympia is to allow the University of Washington the power to set its own tuition prices. It's come up before and never really gone anywhere, but maybe this is the right economic climate for something to happen.

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Item #3: Things That Only the Shadow Knows. On one hand, you've got budget director Victor Moore saying that we can't change union contracts.

On the other, you've got Amber Gunn of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation with the contract language; her reading is that the state can re-open should revenues decreased.

What's the education angle? Idaho, where school districts are declaring fiscal emergencies and reopening their teacher's contracts. Numerous small districts here in my area have given back pay and benefits, and as my local president I might end up leading my people that way as well.

You might be surprised at how many teaching contracts have language related to financial conditions. An example:

The following instructional load standards are established except for traditional large group instruction classes, such as music, K-6 physical education, team teaching and special education programs for which state standards are prescribed, and except when the District because of financial crisis (such as levy failure) has significantly less money for the instructional programs than it traditionally has.

The trick is that these things have to be collectively bargained, but that is also as it should be. Some districts are overstaffed at the administrator level, and demanding that the cuts be applied to the classified, certificated, and administrative levels is fair.

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Item #4: The State Board of Education and the New Accountability Plan. This is one of those stories that I've been wanting to spend more time on. With the Bylsma Plan set to come on line soon and the Board of Education getting ready to push through legislation, this'll be something to keep an eye on. Edie Harding, the executive director of the SBE, says that it's not a state takeover. Edie Harding is a damned liar.

The trick is, like with everything going on in the state right now, there is no money. It's a happy conceit that you can make extremely troubled systems better with only existing resources, but anyone who has worked with struggling kids knows that is not true. The money quote from the article:

“Some of the lowest 5 percent have made attempts to improve and have not been successful,” said board member Kristina Mayer, an educational consultant from Port Townsend.

She said some districts have not chosen to make changes, so the state board is acting on behalf of the children in those schools.

If it sounds outrageous, it probably is. C'mon, Ms. Mayer--if there really are districts that have chosen to ignore the needs of their kids, name them.

If you want a hint of where things could go, check out the EFF's School Rankings and go to the bottom of any one of the lists, like I did with elementary schools. This isn't going to be easy.

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Bits and pieces:

• No Child Left Behind had a birthday last week. The CW is that reauthorizing the ESEA with a new name will be a high priority this year so that the DC pols have something to hang their hat on as they gear up for the mid-term elections.
  
  
• Calculated Risk says that the reason the unemployment rate is holding steady is because a lot of people are just dropping out of the job hunt and not trying any more. Similarly, the Huffington Post says that 1-in-5 working age men is unemployed. That's scary.
  
  
• WEA President Mary Lindquist on school funding in Washington State.
  
  
• Offered without comment: the League of Education Voters is very proud of their recent appearance on Fox News.
  
  
• A group called MomRising is deliving brown-bag lunches to the legislators on Monday, encouraging them to work hard on the needs of kids. This is much better than my "A Flaming Bag of Doody on Their Doorsteps" initiative.
  
  
• I still haven't seen a good answer to the concern that privatizing the liquor stores would only make our short-term economic problem worse.
  
  
• The Washington Budget and Policy Center on what the Governor's proposal could mean for the schools and colleges.

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This week in the Legislature:

Tuesday, January 12th:
House Education Appropriations Committee, 8:30.
House Education Committee, 10:00.
House Higher Education Committee, 10:00.
Senate Higher Education and Workforce Development, 10:00.

Wednesday, January 13th:
Senate K-12 Education and Early Learning Committee, 8:00.
House Education Committee, 1:30.
House Higher Education Committee, 1:30.
Senate Higher Education and Workforce Development, 3:30.
House Education Appropriations Committee, 6:00.

Thursday, January 14th:
House Early Learning, 8:00.
Senate K-12 Education and Early Learning Committee, 10:00.
House Education Appropriations, 1:30.

Friday, January 15th:
House Education Committee, 8:00.
House Higher Education Committee, 8:00.
House Early Learning, 1:30.
Senate Higher Education and Workforce Development, 1:30.

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Next time: we'll look at the Governor's State of the State address, I'll have finally digested the report coming out of the QEC, and the first 7 days of the legislature. Salud!

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What's a Contract Cost?

I think about the budget an awful lot.

In my school district we use a collaborative budgeting process, where all of the administration gets together with representatives from the teachers and paraprofessionals to craft how the money will be spent. It's a concensus-based process that I'll talk about more on a different day; I've been a part of it for 4 years.

Last year was my first year participating as the president of the teacher's union. I started worrying about it in October, when it was fairly obvious to see where the state budget was going, and all through the winter I kept running through scenarios about what could happen and where things could go.

To that end, I went line-by-line through the contract and picked out all of the things that are in there that the district is required to pay for and could potentially be subject to bargaining. Basically, I wanted to know what costs I had direct control over as the union guy, just in case I needed to play a card at budgeting.

Hence, this list. The costs came from my business director, and it's presented in order from highest to lowest cost. For Bret and JL, my belief is that this comes out of general fund money as well as levy money, but given how mixed up things get it's hard to say.

• Teacher Per Diem, $520,000. In my district, each teacher receives 86 hours of per diem time, and each hour of per diem time costs the district about $5,500. That's a pretty impressive sum--if needed, it could cover 7 teaching positions--but that's also about 6% of my member's annual salaries.
  
• Carve Out, $90,000. This is the money that the district remits to the state to cover the cost of retiree health insurance. Some districts pass it along to the teachers, pulling it out of the health insurance pool or the monthly insurance allotment from the state, but my contract says that the district will cover 100% of the costs. Good for me--especially me, since I already pay $400 a month in insurance out of pocket--but not so good in a financial crisis.
  
• Extended contracts, $40,000. My school psychiatrist has an extended contract because of the time that they have to put in after school attending IEP meetings. It's the same for my SLPs and physical therapist. The high school counselors have to report in a week early, to get the schedules done, so they also have extended contracts. My agriculture teacher spends an ungodly amount of hours working on weekends and over the summer attending livestock shows, county fairs, and the like, so he has an extended contract as well. It's to honor the work they do; it'd be very hard to justify taking it away.
  
• PAUs and PRUs, $30,000. This is the money that teachers get for teaching after school classes like spanish, elementary-level sports, computers, etc.
  
• Paid Committees, $14,600. This is for teachers who serve on things like curriculum adoptions, steering committees, safety committees, etc. that meet outside the regular school day.
  
• Materials Reimbursement, $12,500. There are about 125 teachers in my district; each of us get $100 a year to purchase supplies (books, incentives, posters, printer ink, whatever it might be) and get reimbursed by the school district.
  
• Testing Coordinators, $3,480. These are additional $500 stipends that 6 teachers get for taking care of WASL paperwork and making sure that the NWEA testing gets done right; that figure also includes some incidental costs for retirement and benefits.
  
• Involuntary Transfer Stipend, $3,350. Whenever a teacher is involuntarily transferred from one grade to another, or one building to another, they can claim an additional 14 hours of per diem. The figure above assumes about 5 involuntary transfers per year.
  
• Association Leave, $1,000. The contract provides for 10 release days for the Association at District expense; this is so that we can have meetings with the Superintendent and Principals during the school day, if necessary.

Put it all together, and that's about $715,000 in costs that are in the contract that I can do something about. Put another way, that would be equal to about 10 teaching positions.

And that, frankly, is the real dilemma. If I can only "save" 10 jobs, what do I say to person #11? For those members closest to retirement any income they give up is going to impact their retirement calculations for decades to come, so asking them to give up $4,000 in per diem isn't just a one year hit, but a decades-long one that could add up to tens of thousands of dollars. I can't blame them for saying no if I ask them to sacrifice, because in a union there's always that tension between the good of the individual and the good of the group.

It's easier, then, to just hang on to everything and let layoffs fall where they may. Ethically, though, that feels like a complete abrogation of what I'm "supposed" to do.

This is the fun we have.

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Paraeducators in Yakima Working Without a Contract

Something to keep an eye on.

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Negotiating a New Contract When There’s No Money Isn’t Easy

Growing up my mom worked for the local school district, doing a little bit of everything from payroll to personnel to purchase orders. After she left that job she went on to serve 6 years on the school board, which gave her a different perspective that she’s shared with me over the years. I’m labor, she’s management—we have great conversations, her and I.

One of her truisms over the years has been, “Ryan, a budget is a budget. The district only has the money that is has. It can’t spend more than it has.”

Mom’s a very plain-spoken woman, but buried under that confusing tautology is a grain of truth, especially as I sit at the table with my current district negotiating our next 3-year agreement.

Before we went to the table I did a survey of all the members, asking them what areas in the contract they felt needed sprucing up. We received nearly 80 responses, which is a pretty good ratio for a district our size. In our proposal to the district we incorporated the issues that we felt were reasonable (“I want 180 hours of per diem!” would be an example of an unreasonable request), and had them costed out by our district financial man.

Want to increase the stipend for testing coordinators? That’ll be $2000.
Higher personal leave cash-out? $1700.
More per diem? $6,600 an hour on a district-wide basis.
Extra per diem for teachers in combination classes? $17,000.
Caseload limits for special ed teachers? $300,000.
Release time for the president to do local association business? $455.

....and on, and on, and on.

Negotiating is politics, and your average local union is a great reflection of the community at large. I have my contingent that hates the union and doesn’t feel like we should be asking for more from the district; I have another contingent that hates the district and thinks we should bleed them for every penny they have because administrators are overpaid. In the middle lies the majority, those who value the contract and want it to make their lives easier, but not to the point that it hurts the program or the kids.

There’s always a want, too, from the members. It might be more money reimbursed for classroom expenses, it might be an aide to work in the copy room, it might be less meetings, it might be more collaboration, it might be per diem. The challenge is finding out a way to pay for it, and explaining to them why we can’t have it all.

Like the fellow in The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, though, I’m loving every minute of it. Good times.

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Now that's unionism!

Just for fun, go to YouTube and do a search for "CTU Contract Meeting." It looks like an interesting experience in contract-ratifying. Here's a sample:

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