Teacher Contract Vote

Last night the Board took a very unusual step - we did not approve the new contract with our teachers union. The mechanics of what happened are pretty simple, and they are described in this post below. The reasons we took this step are much more complex.

As I've said previously, this blog reflects my own personal opinions, not the opinion of the Board as a whole, or that of any other board member. If you want to know how another board member feels, or why they voted the way they did, you'll need to ask them directly.

The Mechanics
Last night, when faced with a vote to approve the teacher's new contract, I indicated in my remarks that I intended to vote no. Two other board members indicated that they would also be voting no, which meant that the proposal would not be passing the board. The administration has expressed concern, and actually recommended that we pass the contract. However, it was clear that there was not sufficient support on the board to do that. Rather than actually vote the contract down, we voted to defer action, and reconsider additional information at our next public meeting on April 26th.

Why Did I Do What I Did?
We have a serious structural problem in our school district. Next year we are short ~$2.5m, and that deficit rapidly grows to $4m over the next several years. We simply can't sustain the costs and program that we have with the revenues we bring in.

Labor costs make up 86% of our expenses. Less than 9% of our budget goes to administration, and the balance goes to materials and operating expenses. That's actually very good- we want to be spending as much as possible on the program where it matters the most- in our classrooms, with our students. The down side of this is that when you're out of money, adjusting labor costs is the only way to balance our budget.

The contract was positioned to the board as being a "cost savings". I did not feel that was an accurate portrayal. The contract saved $41,000 in reduced stipend payouts, but that savings was put right back into the salary schedule. Further, the contract includes automatic raises known as "Step and Column". Those automatic raises increase our costs by $600K to $800K each year. In a year where we sent pink slips to 17 superb teachers (who happen to be the newest teachers in our district), this is hard for me to swallow. We have also not made any meaningful progress in capping employee health care costs. The district bears 95% of all the costs of benefits, as we have done for many years. This increasing costs is a huge issue.

Many members of our community have felt the crunch of this downturn. Many people have taken pay cuts of 5%, 10%, or more. Many people are also faced with increased co-payments and deductibles, or are in some other way paying a greater share of their health care costs. In this environment, where we are asking parents to fund the an ever-growing portion of their children's "public" education, it just didn't make sense to me to approve a contract where the employees were not involved in that sacrifice.

To be clear, our teachers are a fantastic- some of the very best in the profession. I've said it many times- I'd like to pay them all like the rock stars that they are. The reality, though, is that we don't have the money to do that. We have exhausted nearly every possible avenue to save money, scrimp here, save there, and come up with enough to keep the core program- but we're not there. No one wants to cut compensation. It's difficult for everyone, whether it happens in a 20 person start up, a 250,000+ employee company like HP, or to the several hundred employees in our school district. It is unpleasant, but it's the reality of where we are. I simply could not, in good conscience, vote in favor if a contract where we weren't going to address our largest single cost.

I need to acknowledge the work that has already been done. The teachers took a vote this week that permits their bargaining unit to discuss furlough days as a way to help close some of the budget gap. The proposals that have been discussed so far amount to approximately $400K +/-. However, that's a one-year fix, and we have a structural issue that grows to 10x that size. I just don't think we're done with this conversation yet.

I remain open to dialogue on this topic. We will have a further discussion at the next Board meeting, and I invite comments from the public and our employees. I want to hear what you have to say. And I'd love to figure out how we make this work fairly for all parties involved. Please drop me a line at dsmith {at} lasdschools.org, or post comments here on my blog.