One of the most hurtful
developments of the last few years has been the demonization of teachers, and
the denigration of what teachers do by those seeking political advantage. Most teachers care deeply about their students
and their schools, but we’ve all been colored by the same broad brush: teachers are lazy; teachers are overpaid;
teachers are responsible for all of America’s problems. It has been debilitating, yet somehow we’ve
managed to stay faithful to our students and our profession.
Fidelity doesn’t always mean agreement, however. Sometimes it means having the courage to say
‘no’, and that was exactly the mentality the bargaining team assumed when we
began discussing wage improvements earlier this spring. We have a wage structure that is no longer
sustainable under current fiscal realities.
The seniority system that wage structure is based on no longer exists,
but that structure hasn’t been replaced with an alternative, and as a result,
the loss of steps over the last three years has made life especially difficult
for teachers at the bottom of the scale.
Some improvement in the district’s financial outlook occurred with
the passage of the technology millage, but uncertainty is the plague of school
budgeting.
Changes to existing laws have occurred which we felt were
to our advantage, namely the calculation of professional development
hours. School districts in Michigan are
required to provide 1098 hours of instruction this year, but unlike previous
years, professional development hours that could once be counted as
instructional time can no longer be included in that calculation. That meant that the level of professional
development proposed by the district this year would require time added to the
day in order to meet the 1098 requirement.
Knowing this, we determined that our best course of action in
negotiating a wage increase was to link approval of the school calendar to
discussions about compensation. That has
been our strategy throughout the summer as negotiations progressed. And they have progressed. Discussions have been open and respectful,
and the message has been consistent: the
status quo is not acceptable.
Necessity is a mother, however, and last Friday, faced
with the need to provide parents and students with some kind of calendar to
begin the year, we met with the superintendent in an effort to resolve the
impasse. We were prepared with at least
two possible alternatives to the district’s proposed calendar, both of which
would be problematic for planning purposes.
The first would have involved removing two half-days scheduled for first
semester and moving them to second semester, while waiting to add the
additional time to second semester as well.
The second involved removing several of the scheduled late starts.
Neither of the alternatives we offered would further our
goal of obtaining some relief for our cash-strapped teachers, however, and the
longer we discussed the issues at hand, the more we came to realize the need to
stay focused on that goal. Had we
pressed the issue, the perception would again be that we are adversarial. We don’t care about Oakridge kids, we only
care about ourselves. As ludicrous as
those accusations are, the public perception has been and continues to be that
fidelity always means agreement, and that perception would win in the end.
So we’ve been asked once again to trust: to trust that
the next couple of months will favor our cause; to trust that our efforts to
maintain a positive and respectful approach to negotiations will prevail; to
trust that all of the talk about how much we are respected will prove to be
more than talk. As your leadership team,
we took a pretty significant risk, and one that may very well prove to have
been foolhardy. If that proves to be the
case, our credibility will certainly take a hit, but not nearly as damaging a
hit as that experienced by those whom we’ve been asked to trust.
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