Too Much Allotted For Teacher Raises

Democrats in Washington’s Legislature have proposed a budget that attempts in vain to snuggle up to public school teachers while short-sheeting a number of other important needs.

Prepared in the Senate, this proposal is a seriously flawed attempt at compromise. College faculty and nursing home workers deserve bigger raises, but huge raises for K-12 teachers hog much of the money. The teachers - still unsatisfied - want an even bigger payback from Democrats elected with help from their union’s campaign contributions. Low-profile programs, like an educational research institute in Spokane, face painful cuts.

This budget spends so aggressively on teacher pay raises that it couldn’t handle a slight slowdown in revenues or an increase in school enrollments or welfare caseloads.

Average taxpayers - who make far less than the veteran teachers who’ve been wailing about their $50,000-a-year salaries for nine months of work - do not get any relief. Republicans want tax cuts, adding to the difficulty of a settlement, due by Sunday.

If the shortcomings are addressed, there remains a possibility this will be one of the better legislative sessions in years. Budget writers agree on some investments important to our region. Spokane’s North-South freeway, I-90 widening in the Valley and numerous other road projects should receive state funding. Prospects look good for expansion of the state’s Cheney Cowles Museum, renovation of health sciences facilities at Spokane Community College and construction of the $36 million health sciences building for university courses in downtown Spokane, where medicine is the leading good-jobs employer.

In their draft operating budget, Senate Democrats provide Washington State University $4.25 million for food safety research vital to the agricultural industry. But they provided only half the money needed to continue operations at Spokane’s Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, now entering its first years as a separate state agency.

Meanwhile, K-12 teachers profess outrage at the Senate’s offer, the best they’re likely to get: 15 percent raises for starting teachers, 10 percent for top-scale teachers, 8 percent for midlevel teachers, and a 26 percent fattening of their health benefit. Legislators should find it hard to defend such raises while nursing home workers get 4 percent and college faculty get 6 percent. Many community college instructors receive $12,000 a year with sparse benefits for close to a full-time load - some, teaching remedial classes to students who emerge with marginal skills from the classrooms of K-12 teachers. The Legislature must produce a budget that will be remembered as fair. We’re still waiting.