Sag Harbor School District teachers told the School Board on Monday that they are willing to sit down with district leaders to discuss cost-cutting options—including a proposed pay freeze for the coming year.
At the start of the board’s meeting, before an auditorium stuffed with hundreds of teachers, parents, students and taxpayers, Teachers Association of Sag Harbor President Eileen Kochanasz accused the School Board and administration of peddling “misinformation and double-talk” in their pitch for a districtwide pay freeze in 2010-11. Even so, Ms. Kochanasz said the heads of the four employees unions are willing to talk about the proposal, but only if the board first agrees that it will give taxpayers an opportunity to vote on a budget with full funding and none of the major programming and staffing cuts... more
At the start of the board’s meeting, before an auditorium stuffed with hundreds of teachers, parents, students and taxpayers, Teachers Association of Sag Harbor President Eileen Kochanasz accused the School Board and administration of peddling “misinformation and double-talk” in their pitch for a districtwide pay freeze in 2010-11. Even so, Ms. Kochanasz said the heads of the four employees unions are willing to talk about the proposal, but only if the board first agrees that it will give taxpayers an opportunity to vote on a budget with full funding and none of the major programming and staffing cuts... more
Go in this order: Hiring freeze, pay freeze, benefits freeze. Then, if necessary, follow with early retirements, layoffs of support staff, layoff of other teachers.
The board is supreme in making proposals because they are the elected officials. Cut what you want as much as you want, put it up for a vote. If it fails, cut more, and watch it pass the next go around.
Returning his hefty raise would be a great start in helping the budget!
As for the teachers, as Lee Iacoca once said, "In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else." Cut monies elsewhere and value education and educators.
Teachers unions are standing ...more in the way of helping the children get a good education. Now I have nothing against teachers. I have friends who are teachers. But I despise a union whose contract causes taxpayers to house unwanted teachers in a “rubber room” simply because it’s too much trouble to fire them. I also despise their self-serving tactics to restrict competition and accountability. Why should public school teachers have tenure anyway? Education spending has skyrocketed while educational achievement is essentially flat. Why are taxpayers paying for these kinds of results? Why have the corrupt politicians allowed teachers to get increasing pay for their lack of accomplishment? I guess I answered myself when I say they are corrupt,We need charter schools to add competition to the educational system. vouchers are a good Idea.... Private schools can do the same job for less money and more accountability so why not have them? Someone needs to break the power of the teachers union so we can bring reform to the educational system. Maybe after we get rid of Bishop we can start to clean up the east end.