After the Hawaii State Teachers’ Association convention in March, when internal election irregularities were revealed, one teacher asked, "What does the union do for us anyway?" A portion of the answer can be deciphered from the HSTA’s financials.
HSTA reports on its 2003-04 Form 990 that $3.1 million of $4.8 million in dues collected from 12,513 members was paid out in HSTA personnel salaries, benefits and payroll costs. Executive Director Joan Husted now tops out the pay chart at $157,050 per year, including benefits and allowances. President Roger Takabayashi fares even better. His $160,409 compensation package is $28,000 more per year than earned by his predecessor. While teachers struggled mightily to achieve a less than 3 percent raise per year during the 2005 round of collective bargaining, their union leaders got raises of 15 percent to 20 percent.
The National Education Association claims on its Department of Labor LM-2 form that it gives the HSTA $102,000 in grants for an executive director. At the same time, $105,176 is deducted from teacher dues for an "Executive Director Option." The NEA also funnels back $410,000 in UniServe director grants. However, if all 12,513 members are paying $140 per year each in NEA dues, that would amount to $1.7 million in dues going out of state for purposes other than collective bargaining for Hawaii’s teachers.
Dues also went to the HSTA’s 527 fund, with IRS reporting of $94,221 in receipts and $5,500 in current expenditures, including $2,000 to a PAC supporting Hawaii’s House Democrats, $1,000 to the Democratic Party of Hawaii and $500 to the Hawaii State Republican Party. The HSTA’s 2004 end of year political action fund report declares $49,628 in contributions from the general fund and $30,636 in expenditures to 33 politicians -- all Democrats.
Even payroll costs to run the HSTA Political Action Committee fund are up to $89,000 for an organization that takes in approximately $180,000 per year. Other costs incurred are for automobile, room and board and expense allowance. The candidates are lucky that there’s any money left over for them after all the administrative costs.
Cost saving news for members though: the HSTA’s expenditures on automobiles have dropped down to $86,457 from $87,287 per year. But the bad news is that scholarships for teachers’ kids are down from $2,000 per year to $1,000. Expenses for administrative expenses are up more than four-fold and the cost of advertising has doubled to almost $300,000 year.
So the answer to the teacher’s question, "What does the union do for us anyway?"
The union takes more than $600 from each teacher, gives it to high-paid directors and officers, political cronies and a national organization that fights choice for parents, merit-pay for teachers and efficient use of education dollars. Worse yet, it pays for UniServe director salaries, who then enlist teachers to volunteer their time to phone bank, sign wave and otherwise campaign for the candidates who vow to keep the status quo.
In the final analysis, teachers who say that the DOE is a "top-heavy bureaucracy" that siphons off money to administrators that could be used for teachers’ salaries instead, have only to look to their own organization to see that the DOE and HSTA are appendages of the same beast. Ironically, it is the teachers’ mandatory dues that keep the beast alive.
Laura Brown is the education reporter and researcher for HawaiiReporter.com and the education policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. She can be reached via email at mailto:laurabrown@hawaii.rr.com
This editorial is intended to provoke thought, discussion and an examination of issues. It does not reflect official policy of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. See the GRIH Web site at: http://www.grassrootinstitute.org/
HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to mailto:Malia@HawaiiReporter.com
Offshoots
THE AGONY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION
Daily Policy Digest
EDUCATION
San Francisco's decentralized public schools are one of a handful across the nation that resembles an education market, says Reason. In these successful school districts, officials use per-child funding, parents have the right to leave underperforming schools and school principals have the right to spend school budgets in ways that make their schools more desirable to parents.
The vital component of a decentralized school system is the "weighted student formula." School officials use the formula to allocate funds to schools based on various conditions, says Reason.
Schools with harder-to-educate students (low-income, low-achieving and language-learner students) receive more money than average students.
In 2005-06, for example, San Francisco's "base" allocation was $2,561 per student. The weighted student formula allowed a kindergartner to receive funding of 1.33 times the base allocation, (or and extra $845), and a low-income kindergartner to receive an additional 9 percent of the base allocation (or an extra $230). Thus, school officials received $3,636 for each low-income kindergartener.
Since parents have the right to move their children to better schools within the district, and since the child's funding is transferred as well, school officials have incentives to boost school performance.
The weighted student formula approach yields significant benefits:
Students at every grade level in San Francisco increased performance in math and language arts, and district scores are above the state's averages. (Fifty percent of San Francisco seventh-graders were proficient in language arts in 2005, compared to 37 percent proficiency statewide.)
At John Hay Elementary School in Seattle, the principal controlled about $25,000 a year in school funds before decentralization, and now controls about $2 million. During a four-year period following the change, the district's standardized math scores rose from the 36th percentile to the 62nd.
In Edmonton, Alberta, where decentralization began, three of the largest private schools voluntarily became public schools, says Reason.
Source: Lisa Snell, "The Agony of American Education," Reason, April 2006.
For text:
http://www.reason.com/0604/fe.ls.the.shtml
For more on Education:
http://www.ncpa.org/iss/edu/
Sprout of the Day
“The excellence of a teacher can be judged by the students who finally excel him.”
- Leonard E. Read [Founder of the Foundation for Economic Education]
http://www.fee.org
Sprig
Honolulu was the third most unaffordable housing market in the world.
Source: Demographia
http://www.demographia.com/dhi-ix2005q3.pdf
