It's a Busy Time in the World of Education

Busier than you'd think, given the time of year, but the floodgates really opened right after the election, as noted by one member:

I am completely baffled. Since the results of the election, there has been regular negative news in the Spokesman starting with auditor suggesting an overhaul of the education system with specific details and suggestions. Today, district expense accounts are under scrutiny. I've already forgotten the third one I saw. Has WEA said anything about all this coming now? Was Bergeson hiding this or protecting us from this negative publicity? Is there more you hear coming down the pipe? Do you know how this kind of investigation has been funded or who has been asking for it?

And I'll share with you all the answer I shared with the member: we live in interesting times.

Well, we live in interesting times. :-)

Basic Ed Finance Task Force: This was the front page article about the commission lead by Dan Grimm. Last year the big discussion was about the Washington Learns commission that Governor Gregoire made to look at education in the state; Washington Learns didn't really accomplish anything except to punt to the Basic Ed Task Force and tell them to study things more. Pretty useless, really.

Dan's made it pretty clear that he's no fan of unions. Under his proposal collective bargaining would be done at the state level, there would be no per diem (because in his world, having per diem in some districts is unfair to those districts that don't have any), and salary would be differentiated based on different areas of the state, not on degrees or years of experience.

The WEA has presented to his task force a couple different times in conjunction with the Principals and the School Administrators. Every proposal--every single one--has a price tag of at least a billion dollars; the WEA proposal alone would require about $2.5 billion in new spending. I don't think that any of them have any chance of succeeding, because of the big budget hole we're already facing.

It's something to keep an eye on, though, because Dan Grimm is a pretty dynamic guy and if he can convince the legislature to take money from one area (the carve out, per diem, what have you) and put it somewhere else, that could be dangerous for us.

The State Auditor: A couple of years ago initiative something-or-another passed, mandating that the Auditors Office do more performance audits of state spending. Brian Sonntag, the state auditor, immediately took a look at the schools, because we're the biggest piece of the pie. Last summer they released a 400+ page audit of all the ESD offices around the state, last month they released their audit of the 10 largest school districts in the state (Spokane included), and this week it's the audit of travel practices at those 10 large districts + OSPI.

It's an interesting piece, because if the audit had come out before the election it would have been even worse for Dr. Bergeson; there are tens of thousands of dollars of waste identified from her office alone, including 400+ hotel rooms reserved for a conference that weren't used but that OSPI had to pay for anyhow.

What's Coming? Next month Governor Gregoire will release her proposed budget, which is almost certainly going to include some cuts to education. The big number there will be to see if she proposed a COLA for teachers at all or puts it on hold; I'm willing to bet the chance of us getting the COLA this year is slim to none. For a preview of what could be cut check out this website...

http://www.ofm.wa.gov/budget/pog/finalreport2009-11.asp

...from the state Office of Financial Management, wherein they talk about the things that should be funded and the things they think should be cut to make this coming budget balance. There are a lot of good ideas that are going to go away.