Tag Archives: tax hike

Oklahoma Senate takes up tax hike to halt week-long teachers’ strike

FILE PHOTO - Teachers pack the state Capitol rotunda to capacity, on the second day of a teacher walkout, to demand higher pay and more funding for education, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

By Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – The Oklahoma Senate is set to debate a tax hike package on Friday to raise education funds in the hope of halting a week-long strike by its public school teachers, who are some of the lowest-paid educators in the country.

The strike that started on Monday has affected more than half a million students. It comes after a successful West Virginia strike last month ended with a pay raise and as teachers in other states angry over stagnating wages are considering walk-outs.

The Oklahoma package includes a $20 million internet sales approved by the House on Wednesday, a hotel tax hike expected to generate about another $50 million and a gambling measure that could bring in about another $22 million.

Tens of thousands of teachers have come to the state capitol this week seeking fresh spending for an education system that has seen inflation-adjusted general funding per student drop by 28.2 percent between 2008 and 2018, the biggest reduction of any state, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Last week, lawmakers approved the state’s first major tax increase in a quarter century, a $400 million revenue package that would have raised teacher pay by an average of about $6,000.

That was not enough for the teachers, seeking $10,000 over three years. Even with the pay raise already approved by lawmakers, they would still receive lower mean salaries than teachers in every neighboring state, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed.

Republican-dominated Oklahoma has the lowest median pay among states for both elementary and secondary school teachers, according to 2017 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The minimum salary for a first year teacher was $31,600, state data showed.

Oklahoma has some of the lowest U.S. oil and gas production taxes and a major cause for the budget strain comes from tax breaks the state has granted to its energy industry, which were worth $470 million in fiscal year 2015 alone.

When energy prices plunged a few years ago and tax revenue dropped, Oklahoma lawmakers made deeper cuts to education funding, which was already on the decline.

As a consequence of low pay at home and better opportunities across state lines, Oklahoma is grappling with a teacher shortage that has forced some school districts to cut curricula, and go to a four-day school week.

(Reporting by Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton in Oklahoma City and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Michael Perry)

Oklahoma lawmakers look at tax hike to avert a teachers’ strike

FILE PHOTO: The Oklahoma State Capitol is seen in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S. on September 30, 2015. REUTERS/Jon Herskovitz/File Photo

By Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton

TULSA, Okla. (Reuters) – Oklahoma’s Senate could begin deliberations as early as Tuesday on the Republican-dominated legislature’s first major tax increase in a quarter century to secure funds for raising the pay of teachers, who are threatening to walk off the job next week.

The measure, which would raise about $450 million to fund increased pay for teachers, school staff and state workers, passed the House late Monday by a 79-19 vote. But the money may not be enough to satisfy the demands of Oklahoma’s teachers, who rank among the worst paid in the United States.

Low teacher pay became a national focus after educators in West Virginia, whose pay is slightly higher than in Oklahoma, ended a nine-day strike this month that closed schools statewide, after officials approved a 5 percent pay raise for all state workers.

“April 2 is still on,” the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest union for teachers, said referring to the date when it is threatening to shut schools statewide unless funding for a raise was in place.

The Oklahoma union, which has about 40,000 members, has said it is seeking a $10,000 pay increase over three years for teachers and a $5,000 raise for support personnel.

“Our ask is still our ask,” it said in a statement released after the House vote.

Speaking on House floor on Monday, Appropriations and Budget Chairman Kevin Wallace, a Republican, said the measure that passed the House could support a $5,000 pay raise for a beginning teacher and a nearly $8,000 raise for a teacher with 25 years of experience.

The bill calls for raising the production oilfield tax rate to 5 percent on new and existing oil and gas wells and increasing taxes on other items including gasoline, diesel fuel and cigarettes.

According to National Education Association estimates for 2016, Oklahoma ranked 48th, followed by Mississippi at 49 and South Dakota at 50, in terms of average U.S. classroom teacher salary.

Oklahoma secondary school teachers had an annual mean wage of $42,460 as of May 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In every state neighboring Oklahoma, teachers earned more, and in neighboring Texas, the mean wage was about 30 percent higher, according to Bureau of Labor figures.

For the past few years, Oklahoma has battled budget deficits stemming from the 2014 collapse in oil prices that hit its large energy industry and slammed state revenue.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas and Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)