Teachers, legislators confront school funding

MOSES LAKE — A group of Moses Lake teachers bombarded members of the state legislature Monday evening as lawmakers struggle to find a formula to fund the state’s schools and pass a budget by the end of June.

“That is a concern, a shutdown of state government,” Jeremy Pitts, president of the Moses Lake Teachers Association, told the Columbia Basin Herald after the meeting. “This (school funding) is a problem that is 30 years in the making, and we still can’t solve it.”

At the heart of the debate are competing state Senate and House measures to comply with the state Supreme Court’s early 2012 McCleary decision, in which the court found the state Legislature has failed to comply with the state constitution’s requirement “to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders.”

According to Rep. Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, who was present at the Monday meeting, the House and Senate measures primarily differ in how they will fund education. The House measure uses a mixture of new and additional taxes — including increases on sales, capital gains, and business and occupation tax — while the Senate measure relies almost entirely on the statewide property tax levy.

But the teachers were more focused on salaries and certification requirements — something both bills handle differently as well.

“That’s a major issue,” Springer told the Herald. “We want to pay teachers the same across the state, but regional costs of living differ, and we’ve not figured out how to do that and be equitable.”

Current measures agree on a raise for starting teacher salaries about $10,000 to around $45,000 — a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no experience made $35,700 to start in the 2016-2017 school year according to the state’s most recent teacher salary schedule — with an intention to bring salaries up to $70,000 “fairly quickly,” Springer said.

What happens to the salaries of current teachers, however, has still not been figured out.

“We don’t know about long-term teachers,” Springer said. “No one will get paid less, but we don’t know if the increase will apply to all teachers.”

Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, was also concerned about what proposed higher rates of pay for starting teachers means for those already teaching.

“There was concern about paying new teachers at a higher rate,” Warnick said. “We need to do something to attract more teachers. I highly respect teachers, but I want to fix the public school system.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.