Nations: State can't afford merit pay

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma can’t afford the cost of merit pay for its public school teachers because local tax support for public schools is too low, a member of the House Education Committee said Tuesday.

Norman Rep. Bill Nations, a Democrat, said the state can’t fund a merit pay proposal because Oklahoma “can’t even afford to get teacher pay to the regional average.”

“That’s one of the reasons our teachers are so frightened,” he said.

Nations, along with members of the House Education Committee, spent Tuesday attending an interim legislative hearing on House Speaker Lance Cargill’s merit pay proposal.

The meeting was the second of several meetings planned this fall.

Tuesday, lawmakers heard from representatives of the Oklahoma Education Association, schoolteachers, union representatives from Minnesota and the Norman-based group Professional Oklahoma Educators.

Though most of the speakers urged legislators to bring the teachers’ base salary to the regional level, Nations said getting there would be difficult.

“First we’re going to have to adequately pay all the teachers,” he said. “As long as we’re are losing teachers to surrounding states, then base pay will be a problem.”

But funding future pay increases and providing school districts additional money for operating revenue “will be a struggle,” Nations said because the state’s tax base is too low.

“Here’s the secret that no one in this room is going to mention,” he said. “The fundamental problem is local support for schools in Oklahoma is too low. Property taxes are too low.”

Because the state continues to pick up more of the cost of common education, a greater portion of Oklahoma’s budget is used to fund education, he said. “It’s true. We’re not giving enough money for operational costs. Education funding is too much of a percentage of our budget. Other states have much bigger local support. We pick up what local funds don’t cover.”

And public schools, he said, can’t survive on just local support.

“If we are the bottom two or three in property taxes, we’re going to continue to have problems. But no one is going to alter that — it’s not gonna’ happen.”

Instead, Nations predicted the struggle to fund public schools will continue.

“This has been going on since 1907. We take everything under God’s green earth to support education. And we have to, it’s got to come from somewhere.”

And while Nations acknowledges “record appropriations” have been made to the state’s education system, he said the problem will continue because of Oklahoma’s low-tax structure.

“The real Republican answer is the stronger the economy gets, the more revenue we will have to fund education. But there is no political will up here to deal with real problems. It won’t happen.”

Nations said there have been only two times in state history when the state teacher pay reached the regional and national averages.

“Only twice since 1907, both during oil booms, did teachers’ pay go to national average. Once during the ’20s and once in the early ’80s.”

And Oklahoma won’t get to that level again, he said, unless the economy stays strong.

“It’s not anything that we’ve done,” he said. “Nothing is going to happen to change the ad valorem picture. We just better hope the Oklahoma economy keeps on pumping.”