I am a parent of four students in the Lake Stevens School District. I am responding to Robyn Hayashi’s letter regarding the Legislature’s funding of education. The writer is unhappy that legislators have not fully funded voter initiatives in favor of class-size reduction and cost-of-living-adjustments to teacher salaries. She demands an answer.
Here is an answer: Voters can pass initiatives, but when those initiatives do not also come with a means to pay for them, they are wishful thinking only.
Hayashi was proud to be part of the one-day strikes that have occurred in various school districts, including Lake Stevens. She sees them as standing up for students and teachers.
I saw the strikes as standing up for teachers, but not for students.
If we want to stand up for students, we get rid of collective bargaining, so that school districts can pay better teachers more than less-capable teachers and can provide top-performing teachers a financial incentive to stay in the teaching profession.
If we want to stand up for students, we give administrators the power to fire teachers who don’t perform.
If we want to stand up for students, we give parents the choice of where their children go to school. My sister’s family is moving out of downtown Everett and into Lake Stevens this year just to get a better school for their kindergartner. With the state funding that would have provided my niece with a mediocre education in Everett, they could afford a very good education at a private school, or they could have paid Lake Stevens to provide a good public education at a better school, without having to also relocate their entire family.
If we want to stand up for students, we let school districts implement private-sector reforms — free of collective bargaining — such as switching teacher retirements to a 401(k) plan and expecting teachers to contribute some reasonable amount toward their own health care costs. Teachers already have it pretty good compared with people working in the private sector.
None of these reforms are likely to take place in the current legislative session: the governor and the House will not risk the ire of the teachers unions that finance their re-election. What we have instead is a battle between “more” money for teacher pay in the Senate budget, and “even more money” for teacher pay under the House plan.
But until real reforms happen, I’m not really interested in throwing a lot more money at the system we have. I feel like “fully funding education” means throwing more money at a system that rewards mediocrity, does not reward excellence, and traps students and parents at underperforming schools.
We can do better with the money already provided.
Karl Schweizer
Lake Stevens
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