Seattle superintendent talks school budget, averting teacher strike

The days leading up to the school year for tens of thousands of students in Seattle Public Schools started off a bit uncertain, with teachers threatening to strike. You may recall, in the 11th hour, the union and the district came to an agreement and averted that strike. Their new contract has a number of key changes, including wage increases of 9.8% for teachers. In part one of our coverage, I sat down with Superintendent Ben Schuldiner to break down how the district now plans to absorb the extra $200 million added over the next several years for those salary increases. 9.8% for your teachers and then a little bit higher for the paraeducators. That's right. So we're talking about what, upwards of $200 million over the next three years is going to be added to that budget when we already had a structural deficit. That's right. How are you going to balance this? I mean, it's a great question. And so we were really, really pleased with where we got to. I mean, that's why you do negotiations. The union started at one side, we started at another, and we met in the middle for what I think is a really thoughtful and reasonable contract. And we are still broke. And the good news is that we didn't kind of get more broke, right? And so what we're going to be doing, which is what we've already done, we've already saved about $50 million. We're looking to save another kind of 50 or 60 this year. And you said it was about 200, but that's 200 over three years. So if you're saving about 60 or 70 million per year, that's kind of additive, right? So we think that through some efficiencies, we have a lot of bloat in central office. We will be tightening the reins there. We do think that there are some thoughtful ways of not basically having multiple programs that are doing the same things. There's a lot of redundancy in a very large bureaucracy. One of the things about Seattle is for years, it's had a lot of money. So when you have a lot of money, you don't necessarily think, well, I need to be saving here and saving there. Now we have inherited a structural deficit. And so we've already shown that we could do it, about 50 million we've already saved. We're looking to save about another 50 million this year and then probably another 50 after that. And the way that you do that is by looking very deeply around, is that job serving children in a very direct way? I kind of have a line that I always say, unless you're a second grade teacher, you gotta prove why you have a job. And there's also things that we're doing to save money on the operational side. A good example is right now we have over 2,000 softwares that we use. 2,000? We don't need 2,000 software. Wow. So what we're doing now is making sure that if somebody wants new software, we're checking, well, is there another software that's in the system that we already pay for? Is there something that you could use instead of? You used the word we're broke and then you also said we have bloat. I wanna go back to that. Absolutely. What do you mean by bloat? Sure, I mean, when you look at central office, there's a lot of roles that I'm not particularly sure we need. And now that happens over time, right, is that you say, well, I need a program, so we add it. We need a program, so we add it. And I'm sure it's all thoughtful, but those are things that were added in really good halcyon days where the money was flowing. And now that they're not, we have to take a better look to say, do we really need all those programs? And if we have those programs, do we need all those employees? I think that we have already shown that we can cut some of the bloat and not impact the students as directly as I think people were afraid of. And then also when I say we're broke, what that means is we are spending more money than we get in. That's a structural deficit. That's by definition. Now, do we still have a little bit of money in the bank? Sure. But if you had a salary and you were spending more money than you were making, guess what? You're broke. And that's where we are right now. And so we've gotta really be thoughtful around the money that we take in and the money that we spend. And are we really spending it appropriately? Well, Scholdener has only been on the job for a little over eight months, but his communication style is noticeably different than previous superintendents. Case in point, during contract negotiations, he did not stay quiet, which has been the typical M.O. Scholdener held press conferences and laid out the details to parents. Scholdener says he sees himself as a public servant and that there needs to be open communication with the community. In our continuing coverage tomorrow, we'll have more on our conversation specifically about Sholdener's direction when it comes to special education and the gifted program in Seattle.