Now that we see the final agreement, it would be helpful to compare it the priority issues we gave to budget negotiators before the went into negotiations.
3% Pay Cut to K 12 Classified Employees
Even though the Governor joined with the Senate to publicly advocate for a 3% salary cut for classified employees, we were able to reduce that to 1.9%. This saves state funded classified employees at least $12 million.
Funding for New Transportation Formula
We got what we wanted: $5 million new funding.
Delayed-Funding for School Bus Depreciation
We got what we wanted: no change to school bus depreciation payments. This saved school districts $92 million. This also helped avoid a situation that if this would have passed it would have encouraged school districts with old busses to subcontract.
Consolidation of K 12 Insurance Plans
Though we didn’t get what we wanted, we did get $1.2 million for the State Health Care Authority to study and report back to the legislature on how an effective plan could be put in place to provide employees quality, affordable health care.
Funding for BECCA
We got what we wanted: no change to BECCA funding. This continues the program at its current funding level: $15 million
Funding for PASS program
$3 million was provided for this new program to improve school district graduation rates. Classified employees who assist counselors will benefit from this funding.
According to a longtime higher education lobbyist, tuition flexibility has been requested every year for the last 25 years without any success. This year is the year it is likely to happen. HB 1795 has passed the legislature and only needs the Governor’s signature to become law.
Though this bill doesn’t give higher education institutions complete flexibility to set tuition rates like other states, it is a major step forward.
Based upon the previous budgets, we all expected pretty big cuts, however, now that the final budget is out, it becomes real. Higher education is cut $532 million however this is offset with tuition increases of up to 16% (CWU 14%, WWU 16%), and, a $60 million increase to student financial aid.
K 12 was cut $1.1 billion. Major cuts were made to the following programs:
Suspend Initiative 728 – $860 million
K 4 Class size eliminated – $215 million
Alternative learning reduction – $41 million
Delaying student assessment – $51 million
Reducing child nutrition funding – $6 million
There was a 3% pay cut for higher education classified employees and state employees (a savings of $177 million), 1.9% for K 12 classified employees and teachers, 3% for school administrators (a savings of $179 million). Suspending Initiative 732 saved the state $296 million.
Insurance benefits for K 12 employees were frozen at the current rate of $768 per FTE. That means any insurance premium increases over the next two school years will be paid by employees who use insurance.
The insurance retiree-carve out for K 12 goes up slightly from $64.90 to $66.01 in the 2011-12 school year, and, then to $67.91 in the 2012-13 school year.
Finally, $344 million was saved by eliminating the PERS/TRS 1 Uniform COLA.
On Monday, the Senate Ways and Means committee considered a bill to delay school district funding for replacement of old school busses. The impact of that change will keep older busses on the road longer, increase school district maintenance costs, and will take money from the school district general fund if the school district has to replace the bus earlier than expected.
SB 5476 was originally proposed by Governor Gregoire as a funding mechanism for the school transportation funding formula. What it would have done is take approximately $90 million from school bus purchasing and place that money in operating costs. PSE was supportive of this proposal but unfortunately, school district transportation officials didn’t like it. Boy, was that a mistake that I hope we will not have to live with.
The House ignored the Governor’s proposal. On the other hand, the Senate kept it alive and used $90 million not to fund transportation but to fund other state budget priorities.
PSE opposes the bill because it gives an unfair advantage to transportation subcontractors and because we want the Senate to spend the $90 million on classified employee issues still on the negotiating table: the new transportation formula, reducing a potential classified employee salary cut, and providing half time or more state funded insurance benefits for those bargaining units that go into a state health care program.
On Monday, May 16, Governor Gregoire signed PSE’s bill to improve student transportation safety. SSB 5540 takes effect July 22, 2011, and will allow school districts to place video cameras on the outside of the bus. The camera will be able to document those vehicles that go around the school bus while the school bus is stopped, the stop paddle is out, and the students are either loading onto or unloading from the school bus.
Brennor Beck, bus driver from Peninsula school district and inspiration for the bill, Deann VanWinkle, Arlington school district bus driver and Zone 11 director, and Deborah Nutt, Mead paraeducator and PSE Vice President, were special guests of PSE during the signing of the bill.
Not that it is that significant but I thought you might be interested in seeing what it looks like when the Governor signs a bill.
Whenever we get to this stage of the legislative process, the negotiators are familiar with each advocacy groups interests on the major issues (for instance, they know that we don’t support a 3% pay cut to Higher Education and K 12 employees). In most cases they have already factored the advocacy groups positions into their previous decisions.
Now as they move to the final issues, it is a good time to also make them aware of some of the smaller issues that we care about. This is PSE’s list of small issues that we don’t want to get lost in the discussion of the big issues.
3% Pay Cut to K 12 Employees
If the 3% cut continues in the final budget, we strongly urge you to maintain the $10 million mitigation pool in the Senate budget.
Funding for New Transportation Formula
We encourage you to continue the $5 million for the new transportation formula that was in both the House and Senate Budgets.
Delayed-Funding School Bus Depreciation
We do not support the Senate’s delayed funding of school bus depreciation.
Consolidation of K 12 Insurance Plans
We support the Senate proposal to implement by 2012-13 a new consolidated health insurance plan. We support the incentive in their budget but more important, we believe an additional incentive, state funding for half time or more K 12 employees, is critical to attract classified employees to this new voluntary plan.
Funding for BECCA
We support the Senate’s continuation of BECCA funding.
Funding for PASS (HB 1599)
We support the House’s funding to improve school district graduation rates.
With a strong 34-13 bi-partisan vote today, the Senate approved its version of the Budget completing the first stage of the Budget approval process. And it doesn’t seem to matter where you look, it isn’t good news. So what’s next? The Governor, House and Senate negotiators will go behind closed doors and hammer out a final Budget. Since there are only 6 days left of the regular session, there isn’t enough time to complete these negotiations and a special session is expected to be announced on Thursday.
Back to the budgets. These are the areas of the Budget that are of greatest concern:
Higher Education
Budget cuts are deeper in the Senate Budget but tuition is allowed to go higher (up to 16% per year) to accommodate the cuts. This results in a 5.1 % cut that amounts to $32.4 million less than the House and Governor. There is also continuing debate about allowing universities greater ability to set their own tuition as long as certain conditions are met; for instance, to provide additional low income assistance and in-state students enrollments are not unnecessarily limited.
3% pay cuts for all staff are implemented in all Budgets. In some cases, the universities will not be able to implement these cuts because they have contracts already in place. Where these cuts will be made is an open question but will most likely end in tuition going up to make up for the loss in funding, certain positions eliminated, or some combination of them.
In all 3 Budgets, the state limits its contribution to the higher education retirement plans (formerly known as TIAA – CREF) for certain employees to 6% (this is a 4% reduction). Universities will have to either ask employees to make up the difference, absorb the additional cost, or increase tuition to make up the loss in funding.
K 12 Education
Pay cuts for classified employees are now on the table. In both the Governor and House Budgets, classified employee salaries escaped the Budget ax. With the Senate’s Budget, state funding for classified, certificated, and administrative salaries will be cut 3%. However, in a welcome gesture to classified employees, employees who make less than $30,000 per year are exempt from this cut and a $10 million mitigation pool is set up to help these employees.
In all 3 Budgets, insurance funding is not increased during the next two school years (we currently receive $768 per month per FTE). That means we will have to pay for any increases in premium for the next two school years. Since classified employees will be hurt the most by this lack of funding, PSE has been willing to look other places to find quality, affordable health insurance.
Under the Senate Budget, 16,000 K 12 employees will be offered the opportunity to join a new health insurance plan in the 2012-13 school year. A plan that will treat all K 12 employees the same with the same plans, rules, costs, and eligibility requirements. Employees who join this plan will qualify for an additional $82 per month for their insurance (and there is a likelihood they, or their school district, will not have to pay the retiree-carveout, currently $67 per month).
On this same subject, the House Budget proposes that a workgroup be formed to study how a new K 12 consolidated health insurance plan could be implemented in the 2012-13 school year.
Finally, all 3 Budgets eliminate the PERS/TRS 1 uniform COLA. This saves the State $360 million in the Budget, but more important, it reduces the PERS/TRS 1 unfunded liability from $7 billion, no that is not a typo, to $3 billion.
Before I let it slip by, I wanted to share a fun moment I had with the Senate Ways and Means Committee last Friday: April Fools Day.
Below is the short clip of the moment. As background, I was supposed to be testifying on HB 1443, the QEC (Quality Education Council) bill, but I started out talking about a different bill (SB 5846 – a bill that I had testified on several days earlier).
Yesterday, PSE’s bill to give bus drivers another tool to enforce the laws while loading and unloading students, passed the House 93-3 (the no’s were Condotta, Shea, Overstreet).
We have one final hurdle before it goes to the Governor. That hurdle is “concurrence” from the Senate that they agree with the House amendments (they will agree).
It’s not too early to acknowledge those who played critical roles in this bill’s passage.
Special recognition should be given to our member Brennor Beck, the Peninsula school district bus driver who sparked this legislation and provided excellent testimony during hearings.
Senator Hobbs was our prime sponsor and made this bill possible. He surprised us by helping out at various stages of moving this bill and was the lead public relations guy for the bill (he was interviewed numerous times, for instance he was on the Ken Schram radio show 3 times (I think that is on KIRO radio), Q13 TV, the Everett Herald.)
And finally, Ehren Flygare did a great job keeping the bill moving through the Rules and Floor.
I am proud to have participated in this good team effort.
PSE leaders, along with classified school employee unions representing over 1 million school workers, have arrived in Washington, D.C. to lobby members of Congress and promote classified legislation.
One of the surprises of SB 5940 was the last minute appearance of a $5 million grant for school districts who do the best job meeting the standards of the legislation. The grants will be awarded to school districts in …
