According to an editorial in the major Sacramento newspaper, districts should be looking at the latter.
In the meantime, my district continues to sit on $80 million of reserves--and the state only requires us to have $10 million. About 25% of our teachers are expected to receive layoff notices next month.
I don't know if they are seriously concerned about their jobs or not, but a friend of mine works at Kinko's headquarters and they took a 30% pay cut.
ReplyDeleteWe heard the same thing about 5% pay cuts saving anyone from getting laid off in our district. There were even some comments from non-teacher employees that the teacher's union would get all those people laid off in order to keep their own pay.
ReplyDeleteApart from the situation in your district with the huge reserve fund, do you think it's a greater sign of union brotherhood to take the pay cut and protect your fellow workers, or protect seniority and cut those young ingrates loose?
Taking the pay cut and sharing the pain seems like the sort of thing liberals are always saying we should do. And screwing over the less fortunate to protect your own fat cat status seems like the sort of thing liberals are always saying evil conservatives do.
So why do I get the feeling the union will be doing the sort of thing they'd normally call evil if it was being done by some corporation?
I don't much believe in "union brotherhood". That's not the way to run a school district. Neither is squirreling away 8x the reserve you're required and not spending it on a rainy day.
ReplyDeleteIn the "Things are Rough All Over" Department, our high school art teachers were informed that some of the assistant superintendents were investigating the possibility of offering high school art credit in middle school. On the surface it seems innocuous, but in reality, since Texas requires only one fine arts credit, it's an attempt to get rid of the majority of art teachers. As with all courses, there are fewer students in the upper levels than the introductory course. So in order to cut expenses via salaries, this seems like a good idea. Of course, there won't be any cuts for the athletic programs. Wow, that makes me feel so much better.
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