By Ben Gorman, CEA President, teacher at CHS
Independence and Monmouth are small enough communities that rumors can
spark, catch fire, and spread. It’s important that we have some facts
laid out clearly for all community members to check out for themselves
before people get the wrong ideas about what is going on with our school
district.
First of all, in case you haven’t heard, our contract negotiations have
broken down. This means that we will soon go into mediation. It is the
hope of the CEA that things can be resolved during that time, but that
will require some movement by the school board.
The school district has more money than it has in years past. You may
have seen the article in the Itemizer in which our superintendent
mentioned a reduction in funding. This, I presume, is not deception but a
different understanding of a reduction in funds. The predictions for
increased funding are quite high. However, the superintendent is
skeptical that all that money will come in if other districts also have
increased enrollment. Regardless, it will be more money than we had last
year. In my book, that’s an increase in funding. He works with the
numbers on a day to day basis, so to him it looks like a reduction from
his expectations. I get that. But compared to last year’s funding, it’s
more. I call that an increase.
When the idea of right-sizing (i.e. closing Henry Hill and consolidating
the elementary school populations) was proposed, our school board and
the district office staff came to the teachers and asked for our help.
They knew they would not have the community’s support if they were
battling the teachers at the same time. They assured us that
right-sizing would lead to two things: increases in pay for teachers and
increases in full time employment (FTE) which would lead to reduced
class sizes for our kids. At that time, they went before the community
and said, in no uncertain terms, that teachers had taken hits for years
and deserved to be fairly compensated, and that we needed to increase
our FTE in order to reduce our class sizes. Those were both priorities
for the teachers of Central School District, and we appreciated the
district’s emphasis on sustainable salary increases and increases to
FTE.
The school district’s initial offer was so low that, adjusted for
inflation, it would have been a pay cut for many of our teachers. The
teachers (the CEA) offered to reduce our demands if the school district
would promise to increase FTE as they said they would. They refused.
Teachers also wanted to increase the length of the school year to make
up for years where days were cut. We recognize that one of the most
important ways to improve student performance and close the achievement
gap is to increase the length of the school year. We offered to increase
the length of the school year with the caveat that the increased time
would be devoted to student instruction. The district refused this offer
as well.
I’ve already heard about one false rumor making its way around town.
Someone has been saying that the hang-up in negotiations comes from
teachers wanting gym memberships. I’m certain this is a product of the
telephone game gone awry, but it is categorically untrue. Going into
this negotiation, many teachers and classified staff were upset about
that fact that a select few teachers and community members have been
given access to high quality work-out equipment in the high school’s
weight room, while the rest of us do not have access. Similarly, some
teachers are granted free access to sporting events, concerts, plays,
etc., while others are not. In an effort to address this inequity, we
proposed language which is similar to that found in other districts
which would grant teachers access to these school events so they could:
cheer on former students; provide some added supervision; and, because
many would bring family members, actually increase attendance at these
events. The district said that they considered this a worthy goal, but
they were hesitant to put it into the teachers’ contract since the same
thing should be afforded to the classified staff, and they would remedy
it with a board policy. We thought that was a fine idea, and we told
them we would remove it from our proposal as soon as the board put such a
policy in place. The board has met a half a dozen times since the
beginning of negotiations, and had yet to take care of this. As far as
we can tell, the only action taken by the district was when the business
manager came personally to the high school and took some equipment that
belonged to an individual teacher and some equipment that belonged to
the school’s P.E. department (which had been used for a class put on by
the Get Fit program, a grant designed to help staff improve their health
and lower the district’s insurance costs). This equipment was moved to
the district office. (Don’t believe me? Go check. It’s still there.)
This ham-fisted attempt to rectify the situation had nothing to do with
the teachers’ concerns about the weight room, but it does beg the
question about what kind of business the business manager was managing
while taking this private property back to the district office.
Regardless, this whole issue is certainly not a hold-up in the
negotiations since the teachers have already stated that we’re willing
to drop the language as soon as the board adopts a consistent and fair
policy, and since the board has had ample opportunities to do so. We
expect they will take care of this at the coming board meeting. Please
attend that meeting to see if they do, so that the false rumor can be
laid to rest permanently.
Because this bargaining situation has devolved to this stalemate, and
because it has to do with issues that are so important (people’s
livelihoods and the education of our communities’ children) it’s easy to
see how emotions can run high and things could get ugly. That does not
need to happen. This is a case of two groups of good people with
different priorities. The people who sit on the school board donate
their time and talents in positions where they only get attention when
people are upset with them. They are doing what they think is best for
this community’s kids. Unfortunately, we don’t think their priorities
match up with those of the parents and voters. Large sums of money are
being allocated for “curriculum” without clear descriptions of what that
money will be used for. Is it textbooks? Tablets? High-paid guest
lecturers? Expensive conferences (largely for administrators and
specialists who don’t work one-on-one with kids)? All of these things
have value. The district has also allocated money for future land
purchases. At some point in the future, if enrollment continues to
increase, the district will need more buildings and the land to put them
on. Of course, increased enrollment also brings in more money, so we
think it makes more sense to spend current dollars on current students.
We know (and all the research supports) that the most important factors
in a child’s education are the quality of his/her teachers and the
amount of time he/she spends in the classroom with those teachers. We
have exceptional teachers in our community, but we risk losing them when
we offer wages that allow some of them to qualify for food stamps. We
also risk losing students when we offer a shorter school year than many
districts around us. The school board has agreed that these situations
should be addressed. They just don’t want to do it right now. If you are
concerned about the balance of priorities, and you want to see the
district retain the best teachers and employ them for a full school
year, please contact your board member privately and attend the next
board meeting on December 9th at 6:30pm at the new district office
(formerly the site of Henry Hill Elementary). Let them know that you
want them to enter into mediation willing to compromise for the sake of
the children of this community and the teachers who make that possible.
