Raise triggers teacher lawsuit

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, December 3, 2003

Jared Kink, a history teacher at Henry M. Jackson High School in Mill Creek, got a raise from the Legislature earlier this year, but he’s still not real crazy about it.

He didn’t like the fact that state lawmakers gave raises to some teachers — those in their first through seventh years in the classroom — but not to others.

He believes local school districts and unions should make decisions about how to distribute pay raises.

It bothered Kink enough to lend his name as a plaintiff to a lawsuit brought by the Washington Education Association on Wednesday in Thurston County Superior Court.

"I would much rather have the local control than the small raise," said Kink, who serves on the Everett Education Association’s bargaining team. Jackson High School is in the Everett School District.

In the lawsuit, the association wants the court to overturn a budget provision that mandates pay increases for new teachers. It argues that the $30 million allocation violates the state constitution and chips away at local control by school boards.

The Legislature required that schools distribute the money to newer teachers using a predetermined formula. It also said the pay raises would be withheld if they were distributed differently, the union said.

To Kink, the Legislature was skirting collective bargaining laws.

The Legislature provided pay raises for beginning teachers to soften the blow of suspending Initiative 732, the ballot measure voters approved in 2000 that required annual raises for teachers.

Sen. Dave Schmidt, R-Mill Creek, said the lawsuit has no merit.

"We can change any law via the budget because the budget is a legislative bill that must be voted on by the House, the Senate and be signed by the governor," said Schmidt, who serves on the Senate Education Committee.

"In my opinion, they just don’t have a leg to stand on," he said. "We have the constitutional authority."

The raises ranged from 3 percent for a beginning teacher to half of 1 percent for a seventh-year teacher. The state base salary for a beginning teacher in Washington is $29,149, and the average salary for a classroom teacher in the state is $50,737, according to the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The lawsuit doesn’t seek to block the raises the Legislature gave. Rather, it is a way of trying to prevent the Legislature from circumventing the law in the future, said Charles Hasse, president of the 76,000-member Washington Education Association.

"It wasn’t a policy designed to attract and retain school teachers in the state of Washington," Hasse said. "It was a political ploy. On top of that, it was enacted illegally. They didn’t follow the process that courts say our constitution demands."

Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.