Union unveils revenue proposal
Staff Writer dslipke@oklahoman.com
Frustrated by legislative inaction, the state’s largest teachers union unveiled its own proposal Friday for how state lawmakers could meet the funding demands put forward by the association to avoid an April 2 teacher strike.
Representatives from the Oklahoma Education Association, together with the Oklahoma City American Federation of Teachers and the Oklahoma Public Employees Association, outlined a plan which they said would generate about $905.6 million in recurring revenue from a variety of sources.
“This plan asks everyone to play their part and pay their part to give Oklahoma students a brighter future and all Oklahomans some hope that better days lie ahead,” David DuVall, executive director of the OEA, said during a news conference Friday in Oklahoma City.
The proposal would restore the earned income tax credit, cap itemized deductions except charitable contributions and eliminate the capital gains deduction. In total, those changes would generate about $177 million, according to the plan.
Increasing the tax on cigarettes by $1.50 per pack would bring in about another $211.7 million. A 10 percent levy on
chewing and smokeless tobacco and taxing little cigars as cigarettes would generate an additional $11.2 million.
The plan also includes raising the gross production tax on oil and gas to 5 percent, which would generate $158.7 million. It also would add a $5 per room tax on hotel and motel stays, increase gasoline and diesel taxes by six cents per gallon and make sales tax collection changes, among other proposals. Together, those measures would raisenearly $350 million.
The union has called for a statewide teacher walkout April 2 if state lawmakers don’t approve more than $800 million in new funding for next fiscal year, which includes raises for teachers and school support staff, increases in health care funding and public school funding and money for state employee pay raises.
“If they don’t have the political will to pass a funding formula which provides the increased revenue which we’ve identified that we need, then there are going to be thousands of teachers and parents and students and support professionals and state workers and citizens from all across the state on April 2 that will give them the political will to do it,” DuVall said.
At least 147 school boards have passed resolutions supporting teachers who walk out, according to a union official.
To illustrate the longevity of the problem, Ed Allen, president of the Oklahoma City American Federation of Teachers, held up an arm band with the words “DEAD LAST” printed across it. People wore those armbands during a rally the Oklahoma City AFT held more than 15 years ago when Oklahoma was last in pay, Allen said.
He said it’s time for lawmakers to put their “big boy and big girl britches on and solve the problem.” Last year in Oklahoma City, 25 percent of teachers left the district, Allen said.
“No organization, public or private, can sustain itself and improve when 25 percent of your employees are leaving,” he said. “And that’s a result of low pay. They’re either leaving the profession or leaving our state to get a better job.”
During Friday’s news conference, a couple of students spoke about how cuts to education funding and the struggle to retain teachers have affected students.
“If any teacher were to grade Oklahoma on its work right now, we would get an F,” said Chloe May, a senior at Bartlesville High School. “Oklahoma is at the bottom of the barrel, but we can do better.”
May plans to join teachers at the Capitol on April 2. Recently, she and close to 330 fellow students walked out of class to protest injustices of public education funding and teacher pay. Textbooks are decades outdated, many schools have gone to four day weeks just to make ends meet and schools are being forced to cut key classes out of the curriculum, May said.
“We have a problem, and we can no longer let our legislators treat the future of Oklahoma as a pawn in their political games,”she said.
Hope Davis, a sophomore at Moore High School, said she has two emergency certified teachers, and she enrolled in an online geometry class because her teacher quit.
“No student should learn like that,” Davis said. “No student should ever have their education at stake because a school can’t hire enough teachers.”
Senate President Pro Tem Mike Schulz issued a statement Friday in which he said Senate Republicans will continue working to fund a teacher pay raise.
“Senate Republicans agree that teachers deserve a significant pay raise, which is why 85 percent of Senate Republicans voted last week in favor of a 12.7 percent teacher pay raise,” Schulz, R-Altus, wrote in the statement. “A 12.7 percent raise is 2 ½ times more than what West Virginia teachers received, and would rank Oklahoma No. 2 in the region for average teacher pay. Many of the revenue ideas Senate Republicans support are within the OEA revenue plan announced today.”
Jonathan Small, president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, was critical of the union’s plan, saying in a statement Friday that although teachers need a raise, the OEA’s proposal “leads to a dead end.”
“Some of the proposed tax increases — particularly the income tax hikes — would damage our state’s competitiveness for years to come,” Small said in the statement. “Others would fail to bring in the predicted revenues, guaranteeing future budget shortfalls. And taxpayers will notice that there is nothing in the plan about better using existing funds.”