Are you angry about QCSD's top-10-in-the-state teacher salaries, with no accountability for the worst PSSA and SAT scores in the area? How about the fact that our "average" teacher earns more than $75,000/year, when the average for the rest of the community (for those actually employed) is about $50,000?? Or that PA taxpayers will have to shell out billions of dollars more to assure that the teachers get their full pensions, when no one is insuring our plans? Or that the big spenders on our school board, like Kathy Mosley, Linda Martin, and Bob Smith, may be poised to give the teachers substantial raises, despite our economic hardships?
Well, you have an ally. Actually, thousands of allies. Elected officials who feel just like you do. In fact, they are elected school board members, the folks who make the decisions on hiring and salaries. Unfortunately, they aren't in QCSD, they are over in New Jersey. But let's not let a little river stand in the way of some excellent ideas...
The education picture is rather grim across the Delaware, with new governor Chris Christie proposing an $820 million cutback in state education funding to help close NJ's enormous budget deficit. PA Governor Ed Rendell, faced with similar problems, actually wants to increase such funding by seven percent. Or so he tells us - knowing that the largest voting bloc in the state is school personnel. But even if he is successful, QCSD is facing a budget black hole that stretches as far as anyone can foresee. Cutbacks will be necessary in all phases of the operations. That will certainly have to include teacher salaries and benefits, which make up about 65 percent of our spending.
Last year, QCSD teachers magnanimously "agreed" to extend their current contract for a year, to "help" with the budget crisis. Help??? How does another year of supporting one of the highest salary scales in the state help us? How does paying for another year of a benefits package that would embarrass King Midas help those among our 10 percent unemployed, or folks who can't even afford to keep their homes? But it certainly helped the teachers. They could read the handwriting on the blackboard - salary cuts coming - so they squeezed the community for one last year at the scale handed them in the disgraceful, unadvertised midnight contract slipped through by the board five years ago.
Now it is time for those teachers to really help the community. We need more than another expensive freeze. Teachers, especially those who work in a district where one-third of 11th graders fail the math PSSA's, and 25 percent fail the reading, should not be exempt from the economic hardships everyone else is facing. It is time for our teachers to, literally, give back to the community.
It is happening already in New Jersey. The state school board association has joined with Christie in calling on the state's largest teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, to urge its affiliates to cooperate in the reopening of existing contracts, with the goal of freezing salaries for the coming school year, and then rolling back pay scales in the future. This would extend to all employees, including school administrators. Christie has even promised additional state aid to districts that cooperate.
And NJ school district unions are starting to listen. Willingboro department heads and managers voted to forgo the 4.5 percent raise due them next year. Burlington Township Principals and Supervisors agreed to a wage freeze, as did the four unions comprising the Montclair Education Association. But even more important, many school boards are trying to renegotiate existing contracts. A survey by the NJSBA found that nearly 64 percent of the districts were talking to teachers about re-opening their contracts.
The Franklin Township school board rescinded its proposal, with a modest increase in salaries, previously made to its teachers. Moorestown plans to restore some programs, and eight staff positions, by using money that would have been budgeted for teachers' raises, and by requiring teachers to start contributing 1.5 percent of their salaries toward medical benefits.
There is also a bill in the NJ legislature that would require new hires to contribute to post-retirement medical benefits when they retire. Because health insurance has been the fastest growing area of school district compensation, NJSBA advocates requiring that all school employees contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries to the cost of health benefits, starting next year.
One of the biggest concerns in PA is the looming pension crisis, caused by the huge increase which our legislators voted to themselves, and the teachers (remember that voting bloc?). It will require the state, and school districts (translation: you), to boost payments from $600 million to more than $4 billion in just two years. Rendell has suggested a plan to refinance the expenditure over the next 30 years, which would provide temporary relief, but increase the overall costs down the line. Meanwhile, Christie has signed a bill to roll back the nine percent pension benefits increase the NJ legislature approved nearly a decade ago. New teachers won't be entitled to it. No such plan in PA (remember that voting bloc?).
And when it actually becomes time to hammer out the new contract in QCSD, our directors should have the best possible negotiators on our side of the table, representing the community. That would not be members of the administration, whose compensation is tied directly to teacher salaries and benefits. And it would not be board members, like Mosley (who is employed by a school in Philly), Martin (who owes Andrejko big-time for overlooking improper campaigning on school property), and Smith (who was elected by a small group of Milford families who want increased school spending). We have already seen the disaster caused when our board, without aggressive representation, gave away the store in 2005.
When Quakertown Borough negotiated with its new municipal employees union, it hired a tough labor law firm. When Richland faced off with its police officers' union, the township brought in experienced council. The QCSD teachers will be represented by union attorneys, well financed by the hundreds of thousands of union members throughout the state. We will need the same hired guns, packing equivalent artillery.
And if our union threatens to strike, let them walk - and keep on walking, right to the unemployment office. If need be, replace them all, especially those in the high school. What are they doing for us anyway? They are paid like royalty, have no accountability, and produce bottom-of-the-barrel results. The only leverage they have in negotiations is our fear. We hold all the cards. Work for less, or we will find others who will. The results can't be much worse. The chances of teachers quitting in this economy, and losing their seniority, are zero.
And while we are negotiating, our school directors should remember that they were elected to represent the best interests of the entire community. Only 20 percent of district families have kids in the QCSD system. The other 80 percent still pay the same high taxes, with little voice in the process. Their needs, and limitations, must be considered.
If we learn from our past, and New Jersey's present, maybe we can someday find our way out of education hell.