Education budgets and the "prevailing wage"

Governor Fletcher proposed a state budget to the General Assembly earlier this week, and it's actually not all bad. His emphasis on pre-school education, for example, is sorely needed. Other ideas to support education, however, are more problematic. Fletcher wants to increase teacher salaries, in part, by adding three days to the school calendar. This seems like a strange way to address the issue of teachers being underpaid. Making them work more seems hardly the way to go. Besides, I am confident that three extra days would do nothing to enhance student achievement. I'm a school administrator by profession, and folks in my business have known for years that just teaching the same way louder and longer does not have an impact on how well students learn. Three extra days of the same thing we're currently doing won't make a difference. If you want to reward teachers and address the wage gap with other states, then just raise their pay.

As a public school administrator, I feel conflicted about the governor's plan to eliminate prevailing wage laws, which require workers on state construction projects to be paid a minimum wage based on the average for workers in their region on similar projects. According to the governor and the Kentucky Association of School Administrators (of which I am a member), this greatly inflates the cost of school building projects. However, as the Lexington Herald-Leader pointed out today, the governor has not been able to provide any evidence for this (though intuitively, it makes lots of sense). While I certainly would like to see more money spent on instruction and student needs, the way school building projects are financed, these funds come from totally separate sources. Eliminating prevailing wage might save taxpayer dollars, but it won't mean there will be more money for education, and it might mean undercutting the standard of living for hourly employees who work in the construction trades.

The students who go to school in these expensive buildings will need jobs someday. Do we want a state where they will earn minimum wage for highly skilled labor, or do we want them to have a higher standard of living?