The Great Seattle Teacher Pay Cut of 1894
Facing public backlash, a school board director defends controversial salary slashes that hit the lowest-paid educators hardest.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The recent action of the school board in reducing the salaries of teachers and other employees has stirred up considerable criticism, and A. Spencer, the member of the board who offered the resolution, defends the action with figures. To show what effect the action will have, Mr. Spencer provided a statement comparing salaries paid during the present year to the reduced schedule for next year. Teachers marked 'reduced' who would have been entitled to $50 additional under the rules found those rules suspended, making the actual reduction $100 for each. Superintendent Barnard has stated that if any cuts were made, his must suffer in proportion. In a letter to the editor, Thomas W. Prosch critiques the new arrangement as 'ambiguous, complex, obscure and difficult of comprehension,' noting that the cuts fall with the greatest force upon those lowest down on the ladder of pay, while some of the most generously paid individuals on the force were not cut at all.
“It is said that the entire saving will amount to about $16,000 per annum... and that they [the cuts] generally fall with greatest force upon those lowest down on the ladder of pay.”
Budgetary austerity measures in Seattle schools have been a source of intense civic friction for over 130 years. Today’s battles over teacher contracts and administrative bloat echo the 1894 argument that austerity policies disproportionately target classroom educators while sparing upper management.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.