I was able to attend the collective bargaining rally for public school employees this evening before the Fairfax County School Board meeting. Then I attended 3 hours of the board meeting but had to come home before the historic vote on collective bargaining was held. Given the comments of the board members, I assume it passed.
This is a step forward for better wages for all employees of Fairfax Schools. The cost of living in Fairfax County is high and school employees are finding it difficult to get by. This change will help bring their wages up and reflect the expense of living here.
The higher costs mean that the non-college graduates especially need to have higher productivity as employees and thus higher wages. This is true of college bound graduates, but that will be delayed and a compound of their post high school education.
There was a consensus that vocational education was not funded enough. So this has to be part of justifying the higher salaries by higher productivity of graduates and thus higher wages. That would also help the drug abuse problem by giving more students hope of a living wage.
When students see teachers, janitors, school bus drivers, administrative aides, teaching assistants, etc. not paid a living wage, that is demoralizing. So they believe they won’t get it either. That then leads to intense anxiety and despair that leads to drug abuse.
There was criticism during the public input period that the school board will steer the outcome of task forces and other groups doing reviews or proposing changes towards change that is not helpful to core education or academics. There was a lot of criticism of the board during the public input period for a failure to focus on those parts of education that produce higher skills and employability of graduates. They said the board was overemphasizing other issues than skills and academic learning.
The higher wages from collective bargaining mean that the schools have to find ways to achieve more to justify costs. This includes methods to shift divisive issues to other groups, e.g. voters in referenda or parents at each school. The board has to focus on an evidence based assessment of productivity and wages of graduates. This needs to guide how they spend their time and what changes they make.
The higher costs of better school employee pay mean that the money has to come from somewhere. In the short-run this means higher taxes. In the long run, it means a rise in total factor productivity.
One solution to funding part of the increase is increased human capital in teachers. This can be achieved by partnerships with local colleges to provide continuing education and methods to teachers that work. Part of such a partnership has to include evidence based assessments of what is tried.
A tax on the shortfall of worker wages below living wage is one way to raise revenue and provide information to the labor market of what the living wage is. This should just be on large organizations.
The board among its own members and the executive staff of Fairfax County were cordial and in seeming agreement. This consensus was not supported by some public input comments. They considered the board and senior staff to be off course.
Another way to raise funding is to have bonds contain some provisions to support programs that raise productivity. These have to be evidence based. Such bonds can be purchased by the Fed in its quantitative easing (QE) programs. However, the results have to be evidence based.
The higher pay for school employees will require many taskforces and groups, with some input from outside stakeholders such as businesses and the university employees with relevant know-how. These have to be evidence based and provide reports to the pubic on what is wrong and how to fix it. Mechanisms to insure that the schools are achieving higher productivity and wages for students need to be part of teacher pay.
Non-productive uses of student or teacher time that don’t translate into higher productivity and wages when they graduate have to be reduced or eliminated to justify the higher wages.
