Part of the Senate amendment to House Bill 1443 has been neutralized for the moment, but overall it is still a bad amendment! The provision that would rework the salary schedule to only allow math, science, and special education teacher to get paid for more than a BA + 45 and wouldn’t allow anyone to get increases for more than 8 years experience has been changed to simply refer salary issues to a Compensation Work Group for study. The group, which would begin this summer, is directed to review the teacher salary allocation model and overall compensation system, including experience, education, and teacher evaluations. Certainly the compensation committee could come back to the legislature next year with the same recommendation and the original amendment, but we’ve put that issue to rest for the short term.
Find your legislators: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/districtfinder
Hotline: http://www.leg.wa.gov/LIC/Pages/hotline.aspx
Immediate Action Required
Associations across the state are mounting several campaigns:
- Writing letters to the editor—we want to flood the opinion pages of the local newspapers with letters from teachers, community members, and parents about the school funding issue. If you or someone you know is willing to help out with this, contact me at the office.
- Email/Calling campaign—WEA has developed a strategy on the budget and the rest of the bad Senate amendment to HB 1443. We have a much broader base of legislators who support education in the House than in the Senate, so we need to play to that strength. House members also are up for election every two years, and many of them rely heavily on support from educators and other labor groups. They must hear our anger and our insistence that they can do better for the kids, families, and students of Washington State—we will not forget how they vote this year! We need EVERYONE—educators, parents, concerned community members—to email or call their representatives with a focused message:
- Vote against any budget which eliminates the K-4 class size reduction funding for all schools, includes a state takeover of our health care benefits, and freezes or reduces salaries. Washington kids, families, and teachers deserve better.
- Support HB 2078 which would end tax loopholes for Wall Street banks and out-of-state shoppers and dedicate the $170 million in revenue to education.
- Remove the Senate’s anti-teacher amendment from E2S HB1443. It forces school districts to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to school staffing decisions, overriding local decision making and the role of locally elected school boards.
WEA would like folks to use the Our Voice Washington site so that we can track the numbers of emails sent. Even non-members can use the site. Here is the link to the email feature:
https://secure3.convio.net/wea/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=351
If you prefer to call, the Legislative Hotline is 1-800-562-6000. An operator will answer the phone. You will provide your name and address, and they will transcribe the message you want to leave and automatically deliver it to your legislators. This works well for quick, bullet point messages.
Thank you,
Olga Addae, SEA President
Jonathan Knapp, SEA VP
