Make good on the promise
There are no comments for this page [ Add Comment ]Wednesday, May 23, 2007
The perpetually unsettled relationship between Utah's Legislature and public school teachers appeared to have stilled significantly earlier this year after lawmakers promised all teachers a $2,500 raise and a $1,000 one-time bonus.
In the private sector, salary increases are viewed as corporate love -- a demonstration of appreciation and commitment. The same goes for the public sector: Employees, whether teachers or prison guards or accountants, like to be paid, to receive raises as endorsements of their worth to the organization.
But suddenly there's a new wrinkle in the state's plan to reward its teachers with that additional $3,500. It seems when lawmakers settled on the number of "teachers" due to receive the pay bump and bonus, they forgot to include about 2,200 guidance counselors, psychologists and others who probably should have been included on the list. Additionally, they may have based their calculation on a $2,000 raise instead of the $2,500 figure.
Oops.
The funding mechanism is complex, but in the end it leaves the schools about $20 million short on the promised tab.
This may or may not be a significant problem. First, the state's number crunchers have to figure out whether or not the economy has produced enough extra money to cover the shortfall.
If so, the governor can simply call lawmakers back into a quick special session on one of their interim-meeting days and task them with covering the gap.
But if the money's not there, it means significant amounts of egg on legislators' faces. Some lawmakers have reacted by suggesting that teachers just hold on until after the 2008 regular session of the Legislature -- in other words, the teachers will get their money, they just won't get it as quickly as promised.
If the $20 million isn't there, and that's the only option besides borrowing against future revenue, it might make sense.
Still other lawmakers have suggested yanking administrators out of the "teacher" pool in order to save some money; again, this might be part of a solution, since the pay raises and bonuses were obviously intended for rank-and-file teachers.
We believe, however, that the preferred approach should be to make every possible, fiscally responsible effort to get Utah's teachers the money they were promised less than three months ago.
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