I live in Vancouver and teach in Camas. You might have noticed that many schools in my region didn’t start on time this year.

While we eked out a last-minute settlement in Camas (full disclosure, I was on the bargaining team and am the immediate past-President of our association), our neighbors on all sides of us had to head to the picket line in order to settle their contract issues. At the time I’m writing this, there are still several classified unions representing secretaries, support staff, and other vital members of our educational teams who are working without a settled contract.

In the October 9th News Release from OSPI where Superintendent Reykdal shared his proposed state school funding priorities, he called out the struggles Southwest Washington faced under the revised funding model… which many people recognize as the reason that so many educators’ unions ended up picketing instead of starting the school year on time. That model is one I’ll get to in just a minute, though.

While Superintendent Reykdal identifies some important funding priorities, he also properly identifies the root of the problem in our present system: revenue. While the shift to the statewide property tax was intended to be some sort of great equalizer in funding, it did not have that effect. Besides the mythical 3.1% cap on salary increases (which was finally in early August dismissed by Reykdal in a memo to districts), limits on levy capacity became the stalling point at bargaining tables around Southwest Washington, and despite double-digit-percentage increases in total incoming revenue, skittish district leaders were spooked by the shakeup of the levy structure… so much so that at many tables, the initial counter-offers from district leadership constituted de facto pay cuts for educators, despite net gains in total revenue available for educator salary.

In order to accomplish any statewide priorities to any degree of sustainability, Reykdal is correct that there must be a revised revenue mechanism. While the legislature’s restriction on levy collections in their last move was ostensibly an attempt to “level the playing field,” the offset mechanism (“regionalization” funding bumps for higher-cost-of-living regions) didn’t provide enough of a counterbalance.

I believe that Reykdal’s idea about capital gains taxes make sense, particularly if we can finally acknowledge how deeply regressive the current Washington tax system is (Washington’s tax structure is widely regarded as one of the most, if not the most regressive system in the nation)… and shift some of the burden off of middle- and lower-income households. These households shoulder a greatly disproportionate burden for funding the operation of our state. To improve any of our infrastructure in Washington, including public schools, that burden must be more equitably distributed.

In addition to new revenue sources, there is one more step I would love to see OSPI take as it makes recommendations for funding policy: reconsider staff mix. In Camas, nearly a third of our teaching corps has “maxed out” on degrees and years of experience. When we look at our staff scattergram (the spreadsheet that shows where teachers are distributed by degrees, credits, and years of experience), all the big numbers are in that bottom right corner where the veteran, highly trained educators exist… the expensive corner if we want to recruit and retain experienced and well educated staff.

Despite all that, we didn’t qualify for the 4% added allocation offered for districts with more veteran staff.

While reverting back to a statewide Salary Allocation Schedule would throw the state into unnecessary chaos, I do think there are ways to reconfigure our allocation model away from the flat per-staff-member rate toward an allocation that recognizes the unique challenges of hiring and maintaining a high-quality, veteran, highly-educated staff. It could be as simple as offering four categories of funding level: Staff with a BA and fewer than 10 years of experience receive a certain amount of state funding; BA and more than 10 years are funded at another level; MA/Doctorate and fewer than 10 receive another allocation; and MA/Doctorate and more than 10 are funded at the highest allocation. Take the salary ranges identified in the law, adjust for inflation and regionalization, then make quadrants…the new allocation is the average of each quadrant. I have an Excel model if anyone is interested. I’m just spitballing here, but to me this would alleviate some of the issues at the local level.

Granted, there needs to be a net increase in overall funding; should a tiered mix model be considered, then there would need to be a hold-harmless catch so that no district would receive less funding under any new model.

My big takeaway: Our state education leadership has some good ideas about how we can change our system for the better. How can we as educators ensure those ideas get heard by the people who ultimately make the decisions?