A RELATIVELY BRIEF PREPARATION FOR THE 2011 SESSION
With the session beginning tomorrow, the general question I have, and I know many others share, is how will we define success when this session ends? Will we be successful if we are able to reduce cuts to the services we provide? For instance, if legislators start out with a 10% cut and we end up with a 6% cut, is that success? It would be hard to say that when we know that hundreds, if not thousands of our members will give up salary increases, suffer salary decreases, give up insurance increases, pay more for less insurance benefits, have their hours cut, or, the worst of all, have their job eliminated.
Despite the uncertainty and the obvious defensive battle we face on the financial front, we also have a few “offensive” efforts we will be working on.
Education Funding Reform
Over the last two sessions, PSE was a leader in advocating for HB 2261 and 2776. These bills were the blueprints for a new funding system for K 12. Well, this year is the year they were scheduled to start poring the foundation. For us that meant putting an additional $160 million into school transportation and $700 million into school maintenance, supplies, and operating costs. While we know that the legislature won’t be funding the full amount, we are asking them for a down payment. Our fear is that if the legislature doesn’t fund some of this money, the momentum of the last two years will be lost.
Local Revenue
One hope we all share, in Higher Ed and K 12, is our local revenue sources. For instance, in Higher Ed PSE supports raising student tuition and in K 12 we have an active support program for school district levies. Both of these revenue sources reduce the impact of the State’s revenue crisis. While I don’t expect any new legislation on school district levies this year, there has already been considerable discussion about last Monday’s proposal by Governor Gregoire’s Higher Education Funding Task Force to allow Higher Education institutions to raise tuition rates without legislative approval (PSE supports this proposal.)
School Bus Stop Paddle Violations
Soon after the last legislative session, Brennor Beck, a Peninsula School District bus driver, contacted me to complain about the lack of enforcement of violators of the bus stop paddle in his community. After hearing his complaints, I wanted to find out if this was a local problem or a state-wide problem. After sending a survey to 1,200 PSE bus drivers, we received 368 responses from 87 school districts. Their nearly unanimous conclusion is that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.
After talking with local law enforcement and OSPI (Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction) officials, PSE will be seeking legislation that allows video cameras on the outside of the bus, and, more importantly, permits local law enforcement to ticket the vehicle owner rather than the vehicle operator. The last change is most critical because bus driver after bus driver described that they are so focused on protecting the students, they seldom have time to identify the vehicle, make, model, year, color and a description of the driver (all necessary for a successful conviction in court).
Paraeducator Education Level
For the last several legislative sessions, PSE has tried and failed to pass a bill to start a career ladder for paraeducators. The common question we were asked was how many para’s have degrees, two year degrees, etc., and we were unable to answer the question. During this summer’s discussions about three QEC (Quality Education Council) projects, namely the anlaysis of the LAP (Learning Assistance Program), the TBIP (Transitional Bilingual Instruction Program), and the paraeducator adequacy workgroup, this question arose again.
This issue usually arises when someone points out that there are thousands of para’s working in basic education, LAP and TBIP, in fact some of them have become quasi-teachers, and we don’t know there education level. This becomes important when you note that at the State level, there is a comment once and awhile that the State should have fully certified teachers, not paraeducators, working in these programs.
So if education level is important to teachers, and paraeducators are teaching students, we should have a better idea of their education level. We were able to get this information when the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, but that information was just for one point in time (8 years ago) and, it seems, hard to uncover in the OSPI offices.
It should be noted that this information will help, when there isn’t a revenue crisis, to come up with accurate assumptions of what it would cost to create a comprehensive paraeducator career ladder.
New Department of Education
Governor Gregoire’s proposal on Tuesday to consolidate all state agencies (8 of them) responsible for public education into one agency, titled the Department of Education, under her control, has been met with the resistance one would expect. It is too early to tell how legislators will respond to this, however it is clear that Randy Dorn and the Higher Ed Coordinate Board don’t like it.
PSE is studying this issue but our early review is that the Governor has not made her case that this will result in better student learning. Yes it will put her in charge, and take Randy Dorn out of the picture, but it is a distraction that takes away from the overall effort to protect education from harmful budget cuts.
What Can You Expect on Salary and Insurance?
There won’t be any state funded salary or insurance increases in this budget (for the next two years from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2013). Governor Gregoire has in fact proposed a 3% pay decrease for State employees (this will affect our Higher Ed members. This pay decrease comes in the form of reduced hours of work per week. Will K 12 classified employees face a similar pay decrease? It’s possible that they could reduce the school year from 180 days (something that has been mentioned over the last several months) or reduce the State salary schedule our salary funding is based upon.
Insurance benefit funding from the State will be frozen at current levels for all of us. As a result, our members will have to absorb the increased premium costs that are likely to come our way over the next two years.
As you have read through this, if you made it this far, remember that this is my best guess what will come out of a session 105 days from tomorrow. We’ll see on April 24 how accurate some of my predictions have been.
Posted by: Doug Nelson on 1/7/2011 at 3:13:00 PM
