School district misrepresented the technology levy
February 5, 2010
By Administrator
By Paul Houldridge
So how’s the recession working out for you? It’s not going so well for me and I know of many others in our community who are struggling as well. There are folks right here in the valley that have lost jobs or have had their pay reduced. House values in our area have dropped more than 25 percent in the last 2 years.
Into this situation comes the Feb. 9 election where we get to vote for tax increases. Think about that for a moment. With so many of us dealing with the issues of this recession we are being asked to approve higher taxes. Of course the cause is good — education and libraries are very important and I believe we need to support them. The school levies are both replacements for levies that are expiring this year, and it makes perfect sense to continue most of this funding. But if that was all there was to it then I would be writing a completely different column.
Let me share with you some things that I have found out about these levies and why I think you should consider your vote a little more carefully than you might normally.
The first school levy is the maintenance and operations levy. This money is used to pay for daily operations of the school district not funded by the state. It’s fair to say that this levy is critical to our schools, but why is it up to 40 percent higher than the levy it’s replacing — it ranges from 18 to 40 percent between 2011 and 2014 — while the inflation rate has only been about 2.7 percent? Of course our student population is growing but not by that much.
The second levy is the technology levy. About 57 percent of this one will be used to replace outdated equipment, enhance classroom technologies, and improve emergency communications systems. The other 43 percent is for teacher training. There are several problems with this levy. First, didn’t we just install a new emergency communications system? Second is the drastic increase in funding for technology. This levy is a 235 percent increase over the last technology levy. That’s almost 2 and a half times what we’ve been paying. I get the need to keep our students up to date with technology. But I fail to see how this increase in taxes can be justified during these tough economic times for something that we can get by with what we already have for a while.
But the real issue with this levy is the mischaracterization of the purpose of some of that increase. We are told that 43 percent of this is for teacher training, but it’s not. Are we really supposed to believe that it costs $4.3 million to train 300 teachers? Of course not. Much of this number is really an across the board teacher salary increase that was negotiated in the Technology Compensation Section of the 2008-2011 SEA Bargaining Agreement. It equates to about a 3 percent pay increase for the next four years, plus $400 (one time pay) training budget. That doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that many of us who are paying for it have recently lost our jobs or are dealing with pay cuts.
Here are just a few questions I and others are asking about this pay raise: What happens to these raises in four years when the levy expires? This pay increase seems to be justified as a reward for using new technology, yet in my profession I’m expected to stay current with the latest technology usually on my own time and expense, what makes this different for teachers? Will the benefits of this new technology and increased pay be reflected in student learning?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying our teachers don’t deserve or even need a raise. But it comes at the cost of increased financial hardship on many others in our community through increased taxes during a recession. But more importantly it’s being handled in a less than above board manner. If we are going to give our teachers a raise then let’s do it openly and transparently, not tie it to something unrelated.
A pet peeve of mine is when people equate support for education with constantly raising taxes. I prefer to think of supporting education by achieving the highest levels of academic excellence at a reasonable cost while constantly ferreting out waste so the most effective programs can be well funded. With that in mind, I would urge you to consider if you think now is the time for this increase in spending understanding that if these fail there is still time before the old levies expire for the administration to put together new levies that do not significantly increase spending or hide questionable pay increases.
Paul Houldridge lives in Snoqualmie Valley and is a former school board candidate.
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