When 3.6 equals 6.2

Denver teachers union discounts salary boosts

Published May 14, 2007 at midnight

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For the second year in a row, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association has declared an impasse in its contract negotiations with the Denver Public Schools. That tells us that either the union really doesn't understand the district's financial situation or that it expects taxpayers to bail out the district when the crunch inevitably occurs.

We're not sure which is worse.

Such indifference to hard financial data might be understandable, we suppose, if teachers had been stiffed by the district in recent years. But that's simply not the case. Nor is it the case this year, either.

The district has offered an average compensation increase of 6.2 percent, the biggest chunk of which is a 3.6 percent cost-of-living adjustment. The next largest amount is for "step increases," the automatic raise teachers get for each additional year's experience in the early years of their careers. Smaller amounts come from an increase in the benefit allowance, raises for additional educational credentials and longevity credits.

Of course some teachers get more than the average raise, and some get less, depending on where they fall on the scale for step increases, which top out at step 13. They also have the option of leaving the step salary scale and joining the district's flexible compensation plan ProComp, as hundreds have already done, where they can also earn more than the cost-of-living adjustment.

Union President Kim Ursetta, however, discounts everything except the COLA as insignificant because, she says, all those other things are already part of the contract. The union wants a 4.47 percent COLA because that is how much more money the School Finance Act provided this year and because, Ursetta says, other metro districts are offering their teachers more. At least for public consumption, the union also likes to subtract increases in health insurance premiums from the COLA, claiming that the district's proposal is then a paltry 1.44 percent.

But this is totally unrealistic. Rises in the cost of health insurance are facts of life across public and private employment, and in any event are factored into the consumer price index. And however much the union would like to pretend that the COLA alone counts as teacher raises, every salary hike in the contract comes from the same budget and is a cost borne by taxpayers. They have no reason to pretend 6.2 percent equals 3.6.

The district's figures show a cumulative salary increase of more than 21 percent for teachers who will have worked for DPS for four years, from 2004-05 to 2007-08. To be blunt, that has come in part at the expense of other DPS unions (who have received 11.5 percent) and school principals and other administrators (8.4 percent).

Moreover, total teacher compensation has grown more than half again as fast as district revenues. Even the least financially sophisticated advocate has to recognize that as a recipe for long-term disaster.

The union has nonmonetary goals, too, including what it calls "time to teach," more involvement with how to implement district curriculums and more influence on whether schools are redesigned. Unfortunately, these ideas threaten to slow down reform and centralize some decisions that ought to be made at the local school.

A protest of unhappy teachers outside district headquarters last week highlighted claims that pay has gone up only 1 percent a year for three years. That's not true and it's sad that any teachers would try to pass off such misleading information in public. Even if 3.6 percent isn't the final COLA offer, it's far from being the insult that some have portrayed it.

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