An Open Letter to FWEA & its Membership
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 3/6/10 @ 2:49 pm - Filed Under Featured, Local Politics
To FWEA & Members,
The entire community is struggling right now and your membership is certainly no different. Unfortunately your struggles are being compounded by the lack of leadership from the FWCS administration and poor oversight from the board. Bad financial and academic decisions from years past are coming back to haunt the district, but what you are starting to see is that the administration has no real plan to turn things around. They flailed away blaming teachers in hopes of scraping out some of the “Race to the Top” funds but that pipe dream is now squashed.
The administration’s inability to turn around this struggling district has bred a level of mistrust and apathy into the heart of taxpaying residents. Now they are attempting to drag you down with them and somebody is going down for the lack of academic progress so who do you think they want that to be? Think they will point the finger at themselves? Have you seen any such thing lately? Of course you brought much of this on yourself through your blind support of the administration and their hand-picked members on the school board.
The financial crisis this district faces is not a some sort of classic corporate union squeeze where concessions are being asked for in order to support bonuses and other forms of looting for upper management. Nor are these concessions being asked for in order to appease Wall Street in the hopes for a 50 cent increase in the stock price. No, what we are all facing in this community is a new baseline of economic conditions.
Unemployment is going to stay elevated for years and property tax and other state revenue will continue to decline or stay neutral as well. What that means is that this isn’t just some temporary crisis that you can ignore in hopes that it will fix itself; this is a major problem that requires bold decisions from all public servants including yourself.
This district cannot afford further teacher reductions. Student achievement is already suffering and what we need is a reduction in classroom size, more parental involvement, an increased focus on discipline and an end to social promotion. None of that will be accomplished without the support of the FWEA and its membership.
Currently the $6 million teacher allocations layoffs being discussed are only 40% of the required $15 million cuts. Considering that teacher salary and benefits make up 60% of the budget that’s not so bad. But not one teacher need lose their job. Increasing the portion of insurance payed by employees from 10% to 20% would cut $3.2 million and yet you would still retain benefits that are significantly better than most other workers in the private sector.
An additional 2 year pay freeze coupled with changes in after-school stipends and other bonus compensation would likely make up the rest of the $6 million cut. Ideas as simple as setting up a two-tiered pay/benefits scale that only affects new hires could also help mitigate the problem. Something has to give to end the death-spiral of this district. The more academic achievement suffers, the more people will move out to the suburbs or send their kids to private school. As that happens, property values steadily decline which means less revenue and larger future cuts.
Cuts at this point in time are inevitable. The only question is are you willing to make them strategically to help end the district’s death spiral and prevent student achievement from taking yet another hit? It’s time for FWEA to set aside the idea of teacher layoffs and re-evaluate its contract to find the most student-friendly solutions.
Public servants have to make tough choices but they don’t always make wise ones. What will you do?
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13 Responses to “An Open Letter to FWEA & its Membership”
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Jeff, “No, what we are all facing in this community is a new baseline of economic conditions.”
Truer words were never spoken. The 64k question is “will they listen”?
Great post!
I would also suggest that we get rid of the three teacher professional development days. This would save another two million dollars. Of course Dr. Robinson will say the professional days have to stay because they help develop a more rounded teacher. The standardize test scores should show her that the extra days are not helping, but I do not believe she understands the concept of compromise, nor do I believe the FWEA will push her to learn. Sadly, the FWEA is just another arm of Wendy Robinson.
You are right on that FWEA must make some concessions to “save teachers’ jobs”, which they proclaim is their top priority. But Wendy must make concessions too. At least one area administrator and one other “downtown” position must be cut…if not, we will know that Wendy doesn’t really believe it “about the students”, but about protecting her power base.
One would hope that a union of degreed, professional educators would think differently than the industrial unions that have all priced themselves out of existence by refusing to make concessions on pay and work rules. Furthermore the incompetent administration they bargain with are all former teachers, members of the same profession, not Wall Street moguls or corporate barons as you pointed out.
So what does that say about the state of the teaching profssion? While I have met many great teachers in recent years, collectively the community and its taxpayers know them by their union. The “E” in FWEA doesn’t belong there. FWEA is ultimately about self interest. It sours the ingrained respect we had for our teachers forty yeas ago.
The competent teachers who are about the kids need to take back their union and even question the need for its existence. If that doesn’t happen, the FWCS death spiral will continue. The future of this district, which is currently all too obvious, is in the hands of its teachers.
As previously posted, the hierarchy-based teaching staff reductions (which the union tacitly endorses) will further cripple the local economy by putting newer teachers out of work and discouraging those in the process of completing their education in that field from remaining in our community. This in turn will directly impact local colleges and universities who currently educate aspiring teachers. Of course, FWCS customers will see a further deterioration in the quality of the education product provided due to worsening student/teacher ratios. The two-tiered salary structure idea is definitely worth considering, but what about progressive salary cuts starting at the top of the food chain? A few more brainstorm bits:
(1) Pay-as-you go local school lunches: local resources to provide meal services, or “bag it in”;
(2) Local public transit to offer “pay as you go” transportation alternatives to current “socialized” busing;
(3) Club-sponsored rather than system-sponsored school athletics.
Michael,
All ideas are worth considering at this point. Also, pension benefits are going to have to be reduced or at the very least go to a two-tiered system. The teachers’ pension plan is already dead broke and has an indefinite (i.e. never gonna happen) timeline before it’s fully funded.
More on this later…
Public sector unions now make up the majority of America’a union members. These union’s are conspiring hand-in-hand with elected officials and administrators to further their common self-interests (as Evert Mol points out) to extract more and more money from us taxpayers. The techniques are always the same; (1) during negotiations grant all union requests up to the maximum of tax receipts and reserves available and (2) make sure that health insurance and pension adjustments remain hush-hush while pay rate raises always appear reasonable.
The purpose of public sector unions is puzzling, since they cannot legally strike or participate in slowdowns or have any say in the manner in which the mission of a government agency is conducted.
In the words of Woody Allen’s character, Fielding Mellish (on trial for treason) in the 1971 movie “Bananas”. . .
Please tell me that you are going to run for school board. I’ve been following all the discussions on this blog regarding FWCS and I’m impressed. The children need people like you who can create the right kind of change. I believe you can. The ideas on here are excellent.
Doherty,
Running for any public office is a thankless endeavor and a lot of work. Running for school board is even worse. The office is non-partisan which in general means people don’t give a damn and thus it’s almost impossible to win without the support of the teachers’ union.
I haven’t ruled it out but I’m leaning against it at this point in time…
Jeff- Come on! Running for office allows you to find out who you really are. Selling yourself while saying nothing is a real art. Asking people for money tests your inner character. And best of all, Karen Francisco will tell you and the community whether you’re a closet racist.
Two at-large positions on FWCS Board are open this year. Evert Mol and Jeff Pruit would certainly get my votes if they ran.
This was my suggestion (among others) sent to Krista Stockman that was apparently completely ignored. Many teachers at the top of the pay scale want to retire, but they cannot afford to carry the health insurance until age 65, when they will be eligible for Medicare. I suggested that FWCS offer to pay one-half of their current insurance premiums until for five to seven years (possibly on a sliding scale) if these teachers would retire. I ‘did the Math’ as follows:
Teacher 30+ yrs (Masters) $60,000 X 5=$300,000
New Teacher $35,000 X 5=$175,000
Initial Savings $125,000
Five years 30+ Teacher Insurance -$32,500 New Teacher Single Ins
Savings $92,500 $92,500 New Teacher Married Insurance -$65,000 -$32,500
Savings over five years $27,500 $60,000
Social Security & Medicare
$300,000 X .0765=$22,950
$175.000 X .0765= -$13388
$9,562———————–$9,562 $9,562
Total Saving five years—————————-$37,062 $69,562
100 retirees X $37,062= $3,706,200 $6,956,200
150 retirees X $37,062= $5,559,300 $10,434,300
200 retirees X $37,062= $7,412,400 $13,912,400
[...] it’s ridiculous that it was aired completely unchallenged. We had several posts here at FWP ( here, here and here) outlining steps that could be taken to prevent teacher layoffs. These were common [...]