The same thing is true, by the way, at the federal level where only about 50% of the population pays federal income tax.

This, while the current consensus, is false. Not one dime of federal spending is “funded” by tax, so tax revenue is an oxymoron. The monopoly issuer of the nation’s currency functions by entirely different rules than anyone who isn’t the federal government.

Spending the currency into existence is required before any can be collected as tax. This means that spending actually funds taxes, not the other way around. The federal government must almost always spend in deficit or it leaves nothing in the economy to store value or retire private bank debt. Taxation at the federal level is just inflation control, not revenue.

Raising teacher pay would hardly be inflationary, especially considering the potential to increase productivity, so any attempt to “pay for” it with taxation would end up being deflationary to the general economy. Multiply this times the number of similar initiatives and it adds up.

Taxing the wealthy should be done for its own sake, as should taxing business profits that are excessive. However, neither should ever be considered revenue to spend for a nation that neither needs nor uses revenue.