By Neal Kirby
Education finance laws passed in 2017 eliminated the staff mix factor, which was used to provide state salary funds based on each teacher’s years of experience and training.
Districts with teachers with the most experience and training got more state salary money, and the index unfairly rewarded the most experienced and trained teachers with larger stipends.
The state in 2017 adopted an average teacher salary funding plan whereby each district will receive the same funding for each teacher within each regional salary designation. (The regional designations were set up when the state also ended equal state salary funding and adopted regional funding based on housing costs.)
State Superintendent Chris Reykdal convened a task force to develop salary distribution models that districts could use in deciding how to distribute salaries locally and use to lobby the legislature to re-instate the mix factor.
One Reykdal plan uses the same unfair factors as before and makes it even more difficult to attract new teachers by extending it out nine more years, spreading more money on the high end, and cheating beginning teachers.
A teacher going from the 24th year to their 25th would get a $2,767 increase in pay for just that year, yet a beginning teacher gets only $538 for their first year.
What does a 24-year teacher learn in that year that makes it five times more valuable than the first year?
Two teachers could also take the same 15 college credits, yet a teacher in their 10th year gets a $1,813 increment while the beginning teacher gets only $1,080. Why are the same credits valued 65 percent more at ten years than the first year?
Reykdal’s salary mix plan drastically increases top pay for teachers. Beginning teachers are left behind. OSPI data shows King and Snohomish counties’ schools are also the ones with the highest mix factors and would receive the most salary money if it’s re-instated.
Prior to the Basic Education Act, many districts had a “squared index” with equal increments. If a teacher got $500 for a year of experience, it was the same throughout the schedule, and 15 credits of training got the same increase anywhere on the schedule. Stipends for masters and doctorates were added.
Beginning salaries would be better with a squared index which districts are free to use.
The state last year also ended equal state salary funding for teachers, providing the wealthiest school districts 18 percent more than the poorest districts if the regional salary plan is implemented. Reykdal’s staff mix plan would add yet another way the wealthiest schools get more money and provides more incentives for teachers to move out of poorer areas.
State research shows the poorest schools already have the highest teacher turnover rates, the least experienced and least trained teachers, and the highest percentages of minority and poor students.
If the salary plan (which wasn’t funded) and Reykdal’s staff mix factor are implemented, the poorest schools will have the least state salary funding and turnover would increase. Poorer schools would again be a training ground for teachers. If a student is poor or Hispanic, they would most likely go to a school with the poorest paid teachers with the least experience and training under regional salary funding and use of a staff mix factor.
Why would any rural legislators vote for increased taxes to fund the regional salary plan or support Reykdal’s staff mix plan? Both will worsen the already difficult time poorer schools have attracting and retaining teachers.
Neal Kirby is a former Washington state representative for the 7th district (Seattle), and a former Centralia School Board member. Reach him at neal.kirby@hotmail.com.
