TEACHER PAY Will Washington tidal wave ripple into Idaho?

COEUR d’ALENE — Sharp pay increases next door in Washington might transform the way teachers in Idaho get paid.

Or they might not.

In compliance with the 2012 McCleary court case mandating additional funding for public schools in Washington, this year the Washington Legislature allocated an additional $1 billion to Washington school districts. That funding recently led to double-digit pay raises for teachers in many Washington public schools.

Tops in the state was North River School District in western Washington, which saw an average pay raise of 34 percent for teachers. Closer to home, teacher salaries went up an average of 16.5 percent in Selkirk, 16 percent in Mead, 15.5 percent in Pullman, and 13.3 percent in Spokane.

In the Mead district, many teachers with roughly 15 years experience will see their pay jump to nearly six figures.

Coeur d’Alene Education Association president Bruce Twitchell was glad to hear the good news.

“The CEA is very excited that the hard-working education professionals in Washington are receiving the well-deserved raises that the state has funded,” he said.

The pay hike across state lines is concerning if it leads to a wider salary gap between Kootenai County and Spokane County, said Coeur d’Alene School District spokesman Scott Maben. Given the $48,263 starting pay for teachers in the Mead School District versus the $35,800 starting pay for teachers in the Coeur d’Alene School District, the difference will be hard to ignore for job seekers, he said.

Might Idaho educators jump ship for much higher salaries a few miles to the west? Twitchell said it’s a definite possibility.

“We would not be surprised to see professional educators looking for work 20 minutes away where they can make $20,000 per year, or more, over what Idaho pays for preparing the future generations of this great country,” Twitchell said.

The school district and local teachers’ union strive to be on the same page when it comes to negotiations. Maben said this past spring, the district and teachers’ union tried a new approach called interest-based bargaining.

“The two sides were pleased with this new process, and at this point we expect to continue with the collaborative approach,” he said.

Events in Washington might not change that, he said.

Maben said the district wants to “continue to improve salaries for teachers and other school employees so that we can recruit and keep quality staff.”

However, that’s dependent upon the Idaho Legislature.

“We would hope state leaders recognize the unique pressures border communities confront as they compete for teachers with higher-paying school districts just over the state line,” Maben said.

He added that while pay rates sharply differ between the two states, benefit and retirement programs here are competitive with those at Washington school districts.

The union chief agreed. He said CEA plans to keep plugging away at improving pay for teachers here, but that the state government is ultimately responsible for what can be achieved.

“There is not much the union or school district can do, when the state legislators are failing to do their job and fund education properly,” Twitchell said. “The state of Idaho will continue to lose quality education professionals to other states until the Legislature decides to take action.”

Twitchell added, “We hope that the state of Idaho will follow suit of Washington and dramatically increase funding for education, so educators will no longer have to work second jobs, be part-time fund raisers for their classroom, and thus can be fully focused on what is most important — the students.”

Now that Washington has proven that a state supreme court can successfully compel its legislature to fund public schools to the courts’ specifications, might Idaho follow suit? On May 8, former Idaho Supreme Court Justice Robert Huntley started to chip away at the issue by filing a class action lawsuit in federal court to compel Idaho school districts to stop charging students fees. Just as the McCleary court decision claimed that the Washington legislature has a constitutional requirement to fund public schools first, and to give them more than minimum funding, Huntley claims the Idaho constitutional mandate of “free common schools” both forbids student fees and requires far more state funding for public school districts.

“School leaders and patrons should insist that the governor and the legislators honor their constitutional duty to properly fund education,” Huntley said in May.