Bongo got an e-mail forwarded to him yesterday from a fan of the site. It was very interesting. It appears the HEA flyer backfired in a big way. Rather than getting flooded with complaints from parents, it seems Board President Green at least is receiving support from the very people the HEA was hoping to get on their side.
Bongo knows other board members read this blog, so feel free to share tasty tid-bits with Bongo through the e-mail feature on this site. I'd like to know if the other board members had a similar response to the flyer. Bongo's guess is yes.
Read Green's e-mail for yourself, and then you humans can decide whether or not the HEA flyer had its intended affect on parents:
I've gotten 13 e-mails in response to that flyer- 12 of them were glowingly in support of the board's stance, and the other one was more naive to the facts than outright support for the union. Here's my response to that one:
I assure you the board is doing everything reasonable to retain quality teachers. A key example is the stipend we're offering under our proposal for National Board Certification worth up to $4,000.00 yearly. For a teacher around the mid-range of the pay scale making $50,000, the stipend means an 8% raise on top of the large guaranteed raises in our proposal. This is just one example of many.
The board made a fair offer right at the beginning of negotiations. We could have played the game and offered 1% raises for 4 years and then gone up from there, but we didn't; the board and union leadership mutually agreed the first offers should be fair and reasonable. We have negotiated in good faith from the start, but it's difficult to find a middle ground when the board's initial offer was very close to the maximum affordable and the union's initial proposal was for more than a 30% increase in year one alone.
It must be understood that we CANNOT erode our surplus or deficit spend. The surplus is not just sitting in a bank collecting interest- it is needed to avoid very costly high interest tax anticipation warrants to pay the district's bills when we're waiting for the counties to deliver our share of property tax revenue; the surplus is needed for unanticipated expenses such as the recent fire sprinkler problems at some of the buildings, or paying for subs to cover medical leaves triple what we budgeted for, etc. The Illinois State Board of Education recommends school districts carry a 25% yearly budget surplus for these and other reasons. We're currently at about 23%. As for deficit spending, we could avoid it by slashing programs and increasing class sizes but I'm not sure how that would benefit the students. The 2004referendum, despite all it's associated problems, succeeded in restoring student programs, reducing class sizes, and helping the district achieve financial stability. If we dip into our surplus, deficit spend, cut programs, increase class sizes, etc, to pay for a teacher contract, then the referendum in effect was for teacher raises instead of its intended purpose of achieving financial stability in the district. Not only that, it would also make it a high likelihood that we'd need to go for another education fund referendum in the not too distant future. This board is committed to avoiding future education fund referendums through wise stewardship of district finances.
Our pay is competitive with the surrounding districts that are comparable in terms of revenue, our working conditions are excellent, and our offer is fair and generous. As a union employee and member of a collective bargaining agreement for the last 10 years myself, I am confident the majority of union members agree and will urge their leadership to accept our offer.
Shawn Green
Board President
Consolidated School District 158
www.district158.org
Bongo says "four paws up" to Green's response to the parent who was looking for information. Because unlike the flyer that resident received on his/her door on Thursday, Green took the time to explain the board's stance and why the board cannot give in to the HEA leadership's unreasonable demands.
No comments:
Post a Comment