Public school workers hold annual convention

OLYMPIA – With beach balls, allusions to Harry Potter and Costco-style quantities of snacks, the Tacoma convention center took on a classroom feel Friday as more than 1,400 teachers and other school employees gathered for the Washington Education Association’s annual convention.

Their top priority, however, is absolutely serious: increasing the money spent on public schools.

“There’s a growing realization among business leaders and opinion leaders that school funding is tied to economic prosperity,” said WEA President Charles Hasse. “Investing in schools is investing in the state’s economy.”

Shortly after convening the three-day gathering Thursday night, the union’s delegates voted to reaffirm compensation – salary, benefits and retirement – “as the continuing, permanent and No. 1 priority of the organization.” It’s been the top priority of the 80,000-member union since 1998.

According to the American Federation of Teachers, Washington ranks 18th in the nation for teacher pay, with an average salary in 2003-2004 of $45,437. Connecticut pays its teachers the most – an average of $56,516. The lowest: South Dakota, where teachers earn an average of $33,236.

“Especially beginning teachers have second jobs to support their families,” said Maureen Matuseski, one of the convention delegates and an assistant special education teacher at Shadle Park High School.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a conservative Olympia group that locks horns frequently with the teachers union, says the problem is the way teachers’ pay scales favor seniority and advanced degrees, rather than classroom effectiveness.

“As an average, I don’t think that’s a very bad salary,” said the foundation’s Marsha Richards.

Excellent teachers should be paid more, she said. But under the current contracts, she said, excellence isn’t measured. An enthusiastic new teacher might be brimming with charisma and creativity but would be paid the $30,159 base salary while other, less-effective teachers who’ve been on the job for decades make far more.

“The current salary structure is unfair to excellent teachers,” said Richards. Some states – notably Florida and Minnesota – are matching teacher pay to student achievement. In Massachusetts, Gov. Mitt Romney is pushing cash bonuses of up to $15,000 a year for good student performance and teacher evaluations. Alaska, Mississippi and Hawaii are considering such changes; Florida and Minnesota have already approved similar measures.

The WEA is leery of the Legislature’s call for “accountability,” particularly as measured by the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. The union supports academic rigor, Hasse said. But not, he said, at the cost of “obsessing” over the results of one test.

On the money front, the WEA last year launched a push called “Take the Lead,” a statewide campaign designed to improve public school funding. Washington’s per-pupil spending comes in 42nd among the 50 states, the union said, and class sizes are among the largest in the nation.

Gov. Chris Gregoire, who visited the convention on its opening night, has made better education funding a top priority. She has formed a “Washington Learns” task force to study how to improve education. Among the tasks: coming up with ideas for a stable, long-term source of more money for education.

“The big thing is how does the Legislature deal with the price tag?” said Hasse.

Washington voters two years ago overwhelmingly rejected I-884, a citizens initiative that would have raised the sales tax another cent on every dollar spent. The resulting extra billion dollars a year would have gone to education.

Hasse said teachers will try to spread the message that good schools are good for prosperity. They’ll try to show taxpayers what they’re paying for, he said.

The union will be watching closely next spring when lawmakers in Olympia write the two-year state budget. If there’s not enough money for schools, he said, an alliance of nine school districts, education groups and the union plans to file a lawsuit saying that Washington is neglecting what the state constitution says is its top priority: the public schools.

“We don’t think we’re going to need to do that,” Hasse said, “but people have a responsibility to their students and their profession.”