BOE Budget update – Teacher’s raises
Today Mayor Levine and I (I’m the BOE liaison) sent the following letter:
Dear Mr. Seto and BOE:
Please pass the following on to the association leadership:
If teachers forgo their 4.75% raise, Council would be in the position to take action to both reduce the burden on the taxpayer and restore teacher’s jobs along with educational programs.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Mayor Brian Levine and Councilman Phillip Kramer
We also spoke to the press to inform them of the letter.
Teachers’ raises have been the subject of many conversations I’ve had recently. The teachers I’ve talked to have almost uniformly acknowledged to me they would be willing to take a reduction in their raises/pay freeze to save fellow teachers’ jobs and to prevent programs from being cut from school. Also uniformly they point out that when they took a job as a teacher they knew they would never get a lot of money but they thought they had a guarantee of a steadily increasing salary and a solid pension. If they express any reluctance in a wage freeze they seem not concerned about the immediate loss of wages but the effect it would have on their pension.
The administrators union has agreed to a two year freeze (though all the money will be used to save jobs, not to reduce taxes or save educational programs). The support staff (e.g. maintenance workers) have stated they will follow the lead of the teachers. If support staff froze their pay it would save less than $200K.
If teachers were to freeze their salaries it would save $2.4M. One could propose a scenario where ½ would go to reducing taxes and half would go towards retaining teachers/educational programs.
So far the teachers association (the press has call it a union but teachers will tell you it’s an association) has not agreed to this. Time is slipping away. At this point in time, Council is planning to vote on the school’s budget at its next meeting on May 11th but it is possible, if needed, to have a special meeting at a later time. The deadline, by law, to submit to the state is May 19th.
My question is, “Why have we not heard from the association? Is this a decision of association leadership or the rank and file?” I’d like to hear from teachers especially. Has your leadership approached you? If not, why not? Have you approached them?
If they have approached you, then when did they do so? What options have they given you?
Three final points:
1) The letter was from the Mayor and myself. We are only two people. We can not speak for the entire council.
2) Thank you to those that submitted to the last blog. I posted a number of the comments. I’ve also changed the comment rules. If you reply I will assume you read them.
3) The information passed to the voters was that the budget on the ballot was $1.2M above cap. It turns out it was $2,049,000 above cap or 1.9%. Please don’t look for a conspiracy or a cover up. I absolutely do NOT believe the information was intentionally kept from the public.
Kramer–A very succinct letter, but it might give your story some legs if you put a pricetag/face on the jobs saved, etc. and release an update later
I agree with you. Unfortunately it is not possible to do so because council only sets the amount the budget would change. It would be up to the BOE to decide how to change the line items of the budget
Thank you for keeping us informed. I appreciate the teachers who are willing to forgo their salary increases. In the private sector, many of us haven’t seen a raise in years. The culture of greed keeps our top dogs in huge bonuses while squeezing us ‘little folks’, to a fault.
For some reason… I get the feeling that the ‘teachers association’ is somehow playing political games, which is probably the reason that we have not heard from them. It just doesn’t make sense that there is no response from them.
Praying for better days…..
Cyndie
I believe the fact that approximately 68% of taxes are giving to our school system all board event meetings should be televised.
Also the people have spoken and the school board budget was denied.
Phil,
You simplified the budget so that even I can get it. Seems like dropping the 4.75 raise for teachers and the 2 year freeze by administrators would go a long way towards respecting the voters wishes. With the many foreclosures in town and an N.J. umemployment in excess of 10 %, teachers on the front lines are well aware of the general suffering. Most teachers I know are underpayed in my opinion and do a great job, this is not exclusively true of teachers however.
One criticism of your article—-you don’t suggest what a taxpayer can do at this point to make their wishes known….or is it too late?
Thanks for the hard work.
Court
Thanks Court, what you can do is come to the township meeting on May 11th and speak. Because we are expecting many people the public session will be limited to two minutes each.
Phil,
As always you have the taxpayers’ interest at heart. I have no animsoity towards teachers as most of them are dedicated, hard-working individuals trying to do their jobs the best they can while dealing with roadblocks thrown at them by unfunded state mandates. Their biggest roadblock, however,is their euphamistic association known generally as a union. Several years ago I took a $40,000 pay cut to save my job and few other staff members. The company still went bankrupt six months later. The environment in NJ is no different and until the union realizes the landscape has changed and starts acting in the best interest of their members and not themselves more teachers will suffer. The union executives will tell you not succumbing to givebacks is best for the teachers but that hubris will only fly in their own delusions. The choice is simple, the union needs to giveback and save their members’ jobs or lose more members to layoffs.