The teachers’ strike continues: no school for your (public school) kiddos today, Monday Sept 14th.
My sense is that there is near universal support for the teachers amongst the parents and citizens of Wallingford, and you can count me amongst the supporters as well. That said, I don’t think the district is the main villain here: the citizens of Washington State are partly to blame.
The root of the problem is that there just isn’t enough tax money to pay enough teachers adequately, and that’s a direct result of the regressive tax system we have here in Washington State: that is, because there’s no income tax, the tax burden is unfairly placed on those with lower incomes. According to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, Washington State has the most regressive and unfair tax structure in all of the 50 states.
As Time Magazine summarizes: “The study, published by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, finds the poorest 20% of Washington’s population pay almost 17% of their income in taxes, while the richest 1% pay just 2.4% of their earnings. The middle 60% of earners are taxed slightly more than 10% of their income.”
Jeff on 48th posted a link to this helpful Citizen’s Guide to K – 12 Finance in Washington State in the comments section of an earlier Wallyhood post on the strike, and it has some striking facts that illustrate the impact of this budget busting tax structure:
In a nutshell: the home of Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Zillow, Redfin, Zulily, and dozens of other tech money gushers pays teachers less than the national average, crams more kids into each classroom than the national average and spends less per student that then national average. The state doesn’t have enough money to fully fund education, leaving the local districts to make up the difference through levies and other inadequate means.
Unfortunately, as Eric pointed out, the last attempt to create a Washington State income tax was defeated at the polls by Washington State voters.
So the legislature is in a bind, because it’s legally obligated to “make ample provision for the education of all children residing within” the state, according to our state constitution, and they’re not. This is driven in part by a lack of available funds, and as a result, the teachers and Seattle Public Schools are left to fight it out over the scraps of funding trickling down to them.
All that said, the teachers deserve more than they’re getting, and if we don’t give it to them, we shouldn’t expect to attract quality educators for our kids.
Daniella Kim writes: “B.F. Day families – Monday morning the Convoy Coffee cart will be out front of school serving coffee to our invaluable educators and supporting families and friends from 8:30 – 10:30am. Let’s start the week strong for our educators and join us! Yay, SEA! Yay, coffee!”
Since I watch the JSIS picketers from my home office window each day, we’ve offered up our bathroom and refrigerator to any teachers who need it (since they can’t use the school’s facilities). I hope you’ll find ways to support them, materially or emotionally.
this article is wrong in so many ways
Really? Do you have data to show why this is wrong?
This is the Bezos Libertarian utopia. All hail Jeff!
I can’t believe Washington doesn’t have enough money to pay its teachers. I seem to recall voting several times for levies that would allow teacher raises and more financial resources for the classrooms. Instead, none of my teacher friends seem to get much of what was promised them by the passing of these various levies. Where has all that money gone? And what’s up with all this money the lottery was supposed to provide for education? I won’t be voting for any state income tax as it will merely allow our knucklehead politicians another income stream to waste. Using the massive amount of money we already supply for schooling in a more efficient way should suffice. And, yes, I agree that upper income earners shouldn’t have so many tax loopholes, but I don’t ascribe to the “1%’ers” rants. Wealthier people than I are the people that employ me. They should be able to keep what profits they make after they pay a fair tax like the rest of us (No, I don’t work for Boeing the welfare queen!). As a member of the middle class, I’m sick of paying for everybody else in the income brackets above me and below me. That being said, we are definitely supporting the teachers any way we can. The kids are taking snacks to the various picket lines where their teachers are protesting. I hope someone shows some smarts and gets this mess ended soon
Lisa, what levies? What makes you think that the problem is that the money hasn’t made it to the teachers, rather than that it simply wasn’t enough? How can you say “massive amount of money we already supply for schooling” when Washington State is below average in the total amount of money supplied to schooling?
It’s so easy to say “oh, they should just be able to do more with less”. It would be responsible to back that up with specifics.
I do think the state and district can do more with what they have. Expensive and unnecessary testing could be eliminated, and expensive and questionably effective superintendents could be eliminated. This should be part of the solution. It is part of the reason I am supporting the strike; the teachers are asking for money that directly improves things for the kids.
But, I think you should rethink your stance on the income tax. Implementing an income tax would be the easiest way to equalize the amount of taxes WA state citizens pay. Its not about penalizing the 1%, its about equalizing. When all taxes are sales based taxes the poor pay a disproportionate amount. Ideally, an income tax would replace some of our sales or local levies.
You can start with the breakdown of your property tax bill. See how the numbers go up every year for education?
Yes, I see how they go up. Do you see how the number of students enrolled in the schools go up? How overall inflation makes everything more expensive? How property taxes only account for 20% of overall revenue available for school funding?
Washington has one of the lowest teacher-to-student ratios in the country (only California, Utah and Oregon are worse). Should we hire more teachers or pay cost of living increases to existing teachers? Or somehow try to do both with the little bit of revenue from property taxes, even though they’re just one tiny input?
All this “if we just gave the legislature less money to spend, they’d figure out ways to spend it more efficiently” logic reminds me of the old saw: a farmer complains “I’ve been trying to teach my horses not to eat, so I feed them less and less every day. But every time I’ve almost got one trained, it up and dies on me and I have to start over!”
The recent levies at all related to schools were the building levies, which paid only for upgrades to school buildings (such as the remodels of Hamilton and Roosevelt), and the “Families and Education” levy, which pays for related programs like school-based health centers, early education and summer programs, and other programs related to schools, but not directly funding schools.
http://www.seattle.gov/education/about-us/about-the-levy
As for the lottery, sadly, what money it generates ends up not as “extra” money–some money in the state’s general fund that might have gone to education probably went elsewhere, with the lottery money making up the difference.
Thank you for talking about the strike.
I posted in the other article about the strike sources of money which could go to education. I posted about an entire baseball stadium which the legislature decided to build at taxpayer expense when the voters turned DOWN the proposition for money TWO TIMES.
The strike is not only about money however; it is about standardized testing. SSD requires kids to take more of these than Washington state requires. It is about how these standardized test scores are used in teacher evaluations. It is also about dealing with equity, poverty and human relations.
The taxpayers never voted on the final funding package for Safeco Field. You can be angry about that, but it is untrue to say that we twice voted down the funding package.
It is a good point about the testing though – that standardized testing is not only very expensive, but it has not been shown to improve education or even teacher evaluations. Let’s take some of that money and put it towards more special education teachers so they can have case load caps.
Wonderful article, Jordan – and thank you for your support. The fact is, we do need a more stable tax base for schools and so many other things. A regressive sales tax punishes the poor who spend the largest (proportional) piece of their income on tax and goods. The rich are not waiting desperately for their tax refunds to arrive just to pay bills – and I know many people who do.
As for the tax vote mentioned in earlier comments: Please look it up. It was proposed by William Gates Sr., one of the richest men in the world. An income tax will not hurt them… and having lived in several states with without one, it won’t hurt you, either, unless you were in that income tax bracket. (I was just barely in it that year and would have gladly paid it.)
Last but not least, regarding the “They earned it, let them keep it:” Ballmer, Gates, Bezos, etc. may own the companies and/or serve at the top, but they have hundreds of thousands of workers below them that EARNED that money for them. They are not sweating in warehouses retrieving your DVDs and books. They are not writing software. They aren’t even speaking to the people who do. A lot of people earned that money for them. If they do well, those people down the line will get raises and or a promotion.
We’re just asking that you do the SAME THING for our teachers. These people spend more time with our kids each day than most parents do. They are educating our future workforce. In some cases, they are providing time and attention the kids don’t get at home. Yet we tell them to just accept whatever crumbs we give them because we are married to a regressive tax format that has been condemned time and again by economics pros.
And Jordan, if you’ll indulge me: for those who want to know how to help our kids, check out Soup For Teachers on Facebook. Many of our area schools have individual pages, but SFT will help you find them. The group is providing updates on the strike, but more importantly, it’s helping people coordinate food deliveries for teachers AND students who are not eating because the schools are closed.
Thanks for bringing up that baseball stadium fiasco, Jeepers! That’s just one example of why I will never trust our politicians with our votes or our money here. And Wally Parent, if there were more financial accounting brought to bear with regards to the educational funding situation, we would be fine. We definitely don’t need the Socialist plan you’re pushing.
Lisa, if you think that’s Socialist, you’re a fool.
Being a Socialist should not be considered a bad thing. It means that the whole of society are in this together and we should be working together to make life fair for everyone. Our tax system hurts those least able to afford it. Someone else paid for your education and now it’s our turn to pay for the education of our kids.
This funding problem really shows the problem of our society values as voted by our pocketbooks, where we put public money towards what we want (entertainment via Stadiums, Key arena upgrade, etc.) and not towards what we NEED.
Also, I’m always surprised that in a very progressive city, there are still people advocating treating some people differently (the Rich) just because they have more money, as if the solution to our problems is to take from someone else (Not ME!). I wouldn’t be touched by the income tax as proposed in 2010, however, we ALL need to contribute if we want better teacher salaries, and yes, that means ALL.
Jeff, the Rich are being treated differently, but not in the way you think. Did you read this sentence in the article?
“the poorest 20% of Washington’s population pay almost 17% of their income in taxes, while the richest 1% pay just 2.4% of their earnings.”
a high-income tax would serve to equalize the tax burden placed on the wealthy relative to the poor. If the wealthy 1% paid 17% of their incomes, given how exorbitant their incomes are, we’d have plenty to pay for education, roads, transit, mental health services, and more.
Lisa: I hope you are advocating to end all those pesky socialist plans, like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.
Oh, you mean those plans we all pay for that actually benefit everyone in their old age? You’re funny, Wally Parent. And, Jordan, the little folksy example you supplied doesn’t apply here. The middle class is being bled to death to pay for all sorts of entitlement programs and educational spending. When you all refer to “poor”, what exactly do you mean by that? It’s interesting to see what income levels are considered “low income” when people are trying to qualify for public housing, for instance. That “low income” is over what I make some years! And if you are truly low income, there are all sorts of programs that allow you to cut your utility bills in half or better and other programs to help you pay those bills or assist you with your mortgage payment, there are food banks, there are the various forms of public assistance, etc. And Seattle has become a magnet for many low income people because of our generous entitlements. I’m curious what has triggered this sudden explosion of children. A few years back, we were closing schools for lack of students and selling off surplus properties. (Here is an example of wasting a financial opportunity: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/state-investigates-seattle-districts-sale-of-mlk-school/).
For some reason, a large number of you seem to think the only way out of our various financial messes is to pile more taxes on top of what we already are being gouged for, in addition to penalizing anyone you consider a “one percenter”. As I’ve said, I agree tax loopholes should be closed and maybe more institutions should have to start paying property taxes, too (churches, for instance). But if Bill Gates, Sr. or Jr. and Warren Buffett and whomever else there is out there in the Billionaire Universe wants to donate any money to any of our issues, great! But it shouldn’t be required. We can’t fix our own problems so “…let the rich guy pay for it!” ? That’s ridiculous. And Socialist. I’m sure Kshama has a sure-fire fix to all our problems here in Seattle (and that it would involve even MORE taxation) 🙂
Regarding Social Security, etc. benefiting everyone, yes. Which, by the way, would be the definition of socialism. You do realize that it’s not a savings account, correct? The people in the workforce today are paying for the retirees of today. So the people who will be paying for YOUR Social Security (unless you’re already retired – in which case, mazel tov!) are going to be the future workers.
So to keep it purely about “everyone,” a well-educated workforce ensures that we have people paying into our systems in the future. That’s the social programs but also the roads, the police, etc. I pay for tons of roads I don’t drive on. That’s the way the system is structured.
The problem is, the system is based on people spending money. An income tax has been proven, time and again, to be a more equitable system. I have lived in Maryland for a brief period and paid State, City, County, AND Property taxes, plus a 7 percent sales tax. So I know the pain.
An income tax is predictable and provides money for things we need – including our schools. And no, not everyone can afford private school. Those kids deserve an education as well. Or, to keep it purely about you, you can educate those kids and give them a chance, or not educate them and wait for crime to rise. Your choice.
I paid taxes before I had a student in the public school system, and I will pay long after he’s graduated. I won’t begrudge any child an education.
I love it. The it’s-so-great-to-be-poor argument. Thanks for making my day.
Lisa must be planning on being a 1% some day! that’s the only way I can make sense of her silly argument that they should not have to pay their fair share. To the rest of you, great arguments and most economists do agree with you…unless they are Koch led politicians.
Insults and namecalling do nothing but cause hurt and angry feelings as well as breakdown opportunity to communicate.
Doug, the funding of Safeco field was a long time ago. I remembered it that way. Do you have some specific references that could help me understand what did happen?
HistoryLink has a pretty good synopsis on the funding of Safeco Field. Also, the bonds were paid off in 2011, five years earlier than expected.
If you agree that more pressure needs to be put on legislators at the state level, please consider signing this petition. Thanks, Michael https://www.change.org/p/jay-inslee-randy-dorn-demand-gov-inslee-call-emergency-legislative-session-to-fully-fund-wa-state-education
Thank you for posting, Michael!
Weeding through Lisa’s comments and others, I understand some of the
points she’s making.The middle class has taken a real hit here. The working poor are moving out. Just check local school districts like Renton, Muckilteo, Kent, or Highline, they have more FRL students than Seattle. Many of us who are making between that $50-75K range and are dual income earners who owned property bought before the boom are feeling serious pinch.
Our local levies support local schools and teachers. These levies make up for the state budget shortfall. We have very generous voters. We are not the golden goose. Not every school districts are rich or have generous voters willing to pass levies. This created a very unequal funding system among school districts and now we have McCleary.
For me, taxes in all areas are going up and taken as a whole, I know I’m questioning the bill, looking at efficiency, waste, and where’s the money is going. (This started with the last time I voted for the monorail and against the stadium)
Our local politicians and city planners haven’t been straightforward. More and more of core city basics are being funded by levies rather than general budget. This worries me. Impact fees ignored. Talk about a source of revenue which can help alleviate the total tax bill for many of us.
We don’t need to focus on just the 1%. We need to look around at other sources and I think it’s very fair to ask at the same time if we are getting our money’s worth.
The last vote on a state income tax was five years ago. Just because it was voted down then, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying. It took many votes for gay marriage to be legalized, for marijuana to be legalized, for light rail to happen. Eventually, as things get worse and worse, more people will see the necessity of a fair tax system.
As for the “they earned it, they should keep it” mantra, that makes no sense. First of all, everyone with income earned that income. So, by this logic, everyone should be able to keep it; i.e., not pay taxes. But that’s not how our system works, so they poor pay a greater percentage of the money that they earned by working. Second, most of the income of the wealthy is _unearned income_, that is, not earned through work but through investment. So no, they didn’t earn it.
Finally, most Americans agree that there should be a gradient of wealth, but the extreme gradient that currently exists is beyond what we think it is. See this short video:
Wealth Inequality in America: Perception vs. Reality https://youtu.be/vttbhl_kDoo
“In a nutshell: the home of Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Zillow, Redfin, Zulily, and dozens of other tech money gushers pays teachers less than the national average, crams more kids into each classroom than the national average and spends less per student that then national average.”
Time for a little fact checking…
The teach salary chart referenced in original post does not show correct average salary. If you dig into the referenced source(http://leg.wa.gov/Senate/Committees/WM/Documents/K-12%20Booklet_2015%202-10-15.pdf), you will find that average salary, due to supplemental, is actually $66,039, not $53,252 (p. 25). Additional salary is excluded in the chart because comparable data is not available from other states. It is not clear then that WA pays less than the national average.
Furthermore, Seattle salaries are higher than the WA average (http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/wildly-varying-teacher-salaries-part-of-state-budget-debate/).
It is certainly not clear that Seattle teachers are actually paid less than the national average. The same could be said about the expenditure per student and student-teacher ratios which are state-wide charts, not Seattle specific.
I withhold an opinion whether I agree with the thesis of the original post, but let’s make sure we use valid data so the reader is not misled.
Might consider the relative cost of living, in Seattle vs other states or other places in Washington. Housing, etc.
Certainly would be interesting to see a cost of living adjustment compared to other cities included in the analysis. However, that does not change the fact that the underlying salary assertions are incorrect,
Until that is remedied, incorporating cost of living is just hand waving.
The salary figure they’re using is what the National Center for Education statistics uses. If you can produce a better chart of salaries by state, let us know.
Supplemental income is a phenomenon in schools throughout the country. I think it’s reasonable to assume that Washington’s supplemental income isn’t significantly more generous than what’s paid in other states.
Thank you for this article. Thank you WallyParent, and even thanks to Lisa who is an example of the kind of thinking we’re up against. Stay strong SEA!
Come out to the March to Support our teachers tomorrow from Pioneer Square to JSCEE!
It was organized by Wallingford parents!
More info here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1495868097400202/
Gee, thanks, Melanie, for totally missing pretty much all of the content of my posts 🙂
Whether you look at the teacher salary average as $66K or $53K, either figure pales in comparison to Superintendent Nyland’s salary: $276,000.
http://www.kplu.org/post/seattle-school-board-approves-contract-new-superintendent
Please keep in mind, however, that the strike is about so much more than teacher compensation. There was a lengthy debate over whether students ought to get recess, though there is plenty of research supporting recess for K-5 schools!
Nurses, speech therapists, and psychologists have no caps to their caseloads. Special ed teachers and instructional aides are staffed so low that the city’s schools are under federal scrutiny. And Seattle students are given expensive, unreliable tests that take up days, and sometimes weeks, of class time.
https://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/tests-and-testing-in-seattle-do-you-know-how-many-tests-your-student-takes-in-one-year/
Thank you Erica. I wonder if anyone has a clear list of what tests are required at each grade and by whom? And which are not required? Parents have rights to ‘opt out” their child from some of them. Teaches who have provided this information to parents have drawn ire from their principals in uncomfortable forms. The tests are long in some cases and are administered in the library or computer lab if there is one. Thus the school and regularly scheduled planning periods, events, classroom library use are all cancelled. Ask teachers you know about this, It varies from school to school greatly.
My teacher friends also say they create unnecessary stress on the kids, not to mention the teachers. Keep in mind, these tests are in addition to the regular ones a teacher might have in his/her class as part of their curriculum (spelling test, history test, etc.). Too much testing. Another special ed teacher said she didn’t feel like she was actually teaching her kids, more like training them like lab rats to respond correctly to the tests to achieve the highest marks possible in order to secure funding. And they all complained about the lack of recess. It doesn’t seem to be so much about what kids and teachers need anymore, it’s all about testing supposedly creating excellence.
Lisa — the reason we have increased class sizes is because (oddly enough) there are more kids in SPS and not a similar increase in the number of teachers. And why are there more kids? Because more people in Seattle are having kids than a decade or three ago. And why is that? Because the so-called “Millennials” are the largest generation cohort in U.S. history.
Next, you wrote “As a member of the middle class, I’m sick of paying for everybody else in the income brackets above me and below me.” So, let’s look at cost of living… Living frugally (not desperately) in the Seattle area for a family of 4 takes $72,000 per year (see http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/). The bare-bones desperate income MIT has calculated is $62,700 (see http://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/42660). Remember that median household income has remained flat over about the last 40 years even as we’ve transitioned from largely single-earner households to largely dual-income households. Remember that only top end of the income scale have seen much in the way of increased earnings, despite massive productivity improvements over those 40 years. In other words, those CEOs you reference? Rather than equitably sharing increased profits generated by more productive employees with workers, they siphon the profits for themselves. Income inequality has grown massively over those 40 years.
In addition to $8.3B tax giveaways, corporations in WA (and across the US) are ingenious at dodging taxes. For one local example (likely amongst many many others) see http://www.winbeta.org/news/microsoft-dodging-almost-30-billion-taxes-keeping-money-overseas-says-us.
At the end of the day, here’s the thing… the more people who are in the middle class, the fewer people there will be above you or below you. We’ve intentionally structured our society to hollow out the middle class. There’s a small layer of very rich and a massive swath of poor. This isn’t a “natural” state (in life there never is a natural state, except naked hungry and cold). We enacted laws and economic policy that squeezed you, that make you feel like you aren’t getting a fair deal. The solution here isn’t to begrudge those who are standing up to demand a fair deal, but rather to join them in demanding a fairer deal for everyone. So, one significant contributing factor to income inequality? The collapse of unions, which helped ensure that workers benefited financially from their increased productivity.
And, those billions made by the wealthy at Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, etc etc.? In all cases that wealth came from massive public infrastructure, whether gov’t-sponsored research, or gov’t contracts, or gov’t regulations that provided a playing field that benefited corporations. So why can’t we expect that those who have benefited financially from government investment also contribute back to future government investment?
Next up… incompetence? Oh yes… SPS has this in spades. We’ve not really held SPS accountable for boondoggles like million dollar fraud, bloat, lack of administrative innovation, etc. However, the solution here is not to starve the beast, but simply to expect professionals to be… well, professional. Expect excellence. That said, I’m not sure that we as a society really want our government institutions to succeed (see this insightful article on the subject: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/the-lessons-america-never-learned-from-hurricane-katrina/403750/). Nonetheless, while there is waste in government spending (heck, there’s waste in my own personal spending), it is a fools errand to think that billion-dollar problems can be fixed by million-dollar savings. That’s kinda like someone making minimum wage thinking “Well, if I just cut back my spending a little more, I can buy that cute Wallingford bungalow next year!”
Yes Lisa. It is heartbreaking to see any child burst into uncontrollable tears before, midst or after these
Tentative agreement.. SSD/SEA info on news
Sounds like they’re getting them ready to work at Amazon.
That’s EXACTLY what has happened to one of my friends twice this past year. Her students are low-achieving and have severe familial dysfunction to deal with at home and then they come to school and freak out at these tests. She spent more time trying to calm two of her kids down enough to take the test, than in them actually taking the test. It’s stupid.
In support of the Seattle teacher’s strike the Iron Bull is offering a 20% discount to all striking teachers for the duration of the strike. Just show your ID and you will get 20% knocked off your bill.
I personally have 5 siblings that are teachers and am more than pleased to have the opportunity to show a little support for them.