Tax Credit for Ailing Schools’ Teachers Urged

As an incentive for agreeing to work five years in low-performing schools, California teachers could receive a federal tax credit of $37,000 or more to help them buy homes under a proposal announced Wednesday by state Treasurer Phil Angelides.

The goal, subject to approval in January by a state commission that Angelides heads, is to begin offering the incentives in June and continue for four years.

Angelides said the $150-million program would address two needs: to get teachers to consider working at low-performing schools and “to increase home ownership for an important segment of California’s working population that is finding itself increasingly priced out of the state’s housing market.”

Even after a raise this year, entry-level teachers in California will make just $32,000, and the average teacher salary in Los Angeles County is about $47,000, according to the California Teachers Assn. The average home price in the county is about $200,000.

Teachers who meet certain income criteria--a maximum of about $57,000 a year for a Los Angeles County family--would receive an income tax credit voucher of up to about $1,800 a year for the duration of their mortgage. Federal law ties acceptable home prices for such tax-credit programs to community averages. In Los Angeles County, the cutoff level for teachers who participate would be $196,000 for an existing home, $230,000 for a new one.

Only first-time home buyers or those who have not owned a home in three years would be eligible for the program.

Details of how the low-performing California schools would be identified remain to be worked out, though Angelides said he has asked both the state superintendent of public instruction and the governor’s education secretary to come up with a plan.

Creating incentives for teachers to go to the inner city and stay has been among the most pressing concerns of those seeking to improve the performance of California’s students. Judy Johnson, associate director of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, said mortgage relief has been one of the most exciting ideas.

“We feel there have to be some other ways, besides salaries, to get people to stay,” Johnson said. “Tax credits and low-interest mortgages are alternative things we hadn’t considered before that . . . may make it worth making a long-term commitment.”

Recent studies have shown a widening experience gap between teachers at low-income and middle-class schools, accelerated by the reduction in primary class size, which opened up positions at even the most sought-after schools.

In some of the South-Central Los Angeles schools where Johnson runs a coaching program for new teachers, 30% of instructors lack credentials and up to a third of the staff turns over annually.

Although welcoming assistance, teachers and union officials said a tax break of $1,800 a year might not offset the reasons teachers do not stay in inner-city schools.

“Working conditions at those schools are terrible,” said Steve Blazak, spokesman for United Teachers-Los Angeles. “They may have a long commute, their spouse is concerned about them, the schools are old and overcrowded so there’s no parking. . . . Then their car gets vandalized. It’s a terrible, terrible situation.”

The cost of the program would come out of the $1.6 billion in tax credits that the federal government will allow California to give out this year. Such credits typically go to a range of purposes, including low-income housing construction and creating manufacturing enterprise zones.

Angelides said he would like to see the program grow.

“I want to get it up and running,” he said. “Clearly if it’s successful, I would hope we could expand it.”