Spurred by [a comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/seattlepublicschools/comments/1txwj4u/comment/oq04mpb/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) from u/[BurtonErrney](https://www.reddit.com/user/BurtonErrney/) in comment regarding how Instructional Assistants are making extremely little ($52k/year for step 8 of 9 on pay scale) even after the [contracts negotiations in 2022 citing their plight then](https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/striking-seattle-teachers-aides-explain-why-they-are-on-the-picket-line/), I yanked the s275 data and used Claude to produce an analysis of the pay gap between the lowest earning and highest earning employees that are likely SEA represented.  Full write-up is here:  
  
[https://www.sps-by-the-numbers.com/analyses/seattle\_sea\_pay\_gap.html](https://www.sps-by-the-numbers.com/analyses/seattle_sea_pay_gap.html)

The headline points are:

* Across the board flat % raises widens the gap (sorta the opposite impact of a flat-tax)
* This impact compounds over time (if you increase slower than others on one raise, you will also increase slower on the next)
* The number of FTE making < $65k is nearly equal to # of FTE making > $125k
* In a progressive structure, trimming 1% increase from the top-band frees up enough money for 1.8% increase in the bottom band.

This is something folks in SEA should consider when discussing how they want to look at the negotiations starting tomorrow.

Also...because I'm pointing at teacher pay...I added an analysis at the end of how much Seattle teachers get paid versus the rest of the state and provided a couple of views adjusting for cost of living, etc. Net result: the last round of bargaining brought us up so discretionary funds are in-line with the rural districts and slightly behind urban and that's with the cost-of-living adjustment likely missing the extreme spike in Seattle vs the rest of the metro area.  Now there's all sorts of arguments to be had about what's the right adjustments to use, etc., but at least in this particular assessment, I would be hard pressed to somehow say teachers are making bank.  Especially when compared to the suburban districts around us.

On the flip side, just cause they're doing worse does NOT mean the district at all has any money to reallocate to them.

District finances are confusing because [31% of the budget isn't well described in the budget book](https://medium.com/@awongawong/manufacturing-a-deficit-why-we-always-have-100m-in-the-bank-but-keep-having-to-cut-staff-39020c2bef82); the budget predicted a [multi-tens-of-million deficit for 20+ years](https://medium.com/@awongawong/manufacturing-a-deficit-why-we-always-have-100m-in-the-bank-but-keep-having-to-cut-staff-39020c2bef82) even though they only started losing money in 2021-22; folks claim that we have some major enrollment decline when [enrollment is okay enough](https://medium.com/@awongawong/sps-enrollment-is-far-higher-than-much-of-the-last-2-decades-fa782f61f322) but configured differently as [SE seattle lots of enrollment whereas NW seattle grew](https://www.reddit.com/r/seattlepublicschools/comments/1rg2ili/community_meeting_info_primer_enrollment_over/); and there's just weird stuff in the budget itself that makes it [hard to show a tight relation between budget allocation and spending](https://medium.com/@awongawong/cracking-the-budget-1-chronic-underspend-7d6098cc2fbc) yearly.

However, you can actually put nearly all that aside and look at one single key number: the \*actual\* general fund balance change each year.  Since 2021-22 we've been -10M, -42M, -13M, -24M.  Given the lack of major structural change so far, I expect by end of year we will also be around -25M.

That means that any savings found (and I'm sure there are savings to be found) needs to make up 25M of actual spending \*yearly\* before we can even imagine reallocating it to more staffing for kids, increasing pay, or whatever.

That $98M number is pointless to discuss unless you also think it makes sense: "they the snowpack this year means most people should only take 10min showers...but hey, there's a bunch of water in Lake Washington. If we drain it and give it to everyone, that should let us tell everyone they can take 12 minute showers foreveeeeeer". Yeah no.  
  
Unless you can fix the $-25M, you need look at cashflow, not balance.  Then you can think about whether you care about pay-gap or cost of living....and then you'll likely end up depressed like me in realizing the two ends don't meet in a happy-making way.

Pay Gap Analysis of SEA represented staff