It won’t come as a surprise to readers of this blog that NEA has a $14 million budget shortfall, or that it has lost more than 39,000 active members. Pringle stated that the deficit is closer to $17 million due to increased costs to the union’s legal services program, which subsidizes each state affiliate’s attorney referral program and other litigation-based actions for individual members.
Plus, Pringle said, “We have to assume we haven’t hit bottom yet.”
What might surprise you, given NEA’s aversion to staff reductions in the public schools (to the point where California just passed a law under cover of darkness to save teachers’ jobs even without the money to pay them – a move pioneered in Detroit and Los Angeles), is that the union plans to partially cut the deficit with $4.8 million in staff reductions.
Asked how many staffers would be lost, Pringle replied, “about 20.” If anyone in the audience did the math, that’s $240,000 saved per staffer, which tells you all you need to know.
Indeed.
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