Most of the teachers in any given state work for the public school systems in those states.  Therefore most of the money paid to teachers happens in the form of tax dollars raised through property and other local taxes, state taxes and fees (fees are just another form of tax) and our federal income taxes.  So the majority of the union dues paid to the teacher’s unions to which teachers must belong as a condition of their employment comes from our tax money.

As taxpayers we are required then to support the teacher’s unions and they in turn use this money to lobby our government.  As a labor union they are negotiating on the premise of doing what’s best for their members as any labor union should – but they are doing it at the cost of the education system and the children trapped within it.  They are also doing it with public money.

I’ve lately come to really resent sending my children to school.  I have no choice – I must educate them according to law.  I could send them to a private school but I’ve not found one that meets my educational philosophy.  I could home school them but that presents other challenges and denies them certain opportunities as there is sometimes a social stigma attached to home schooling.  The balance I’ve struck is to send them to our local school system but to be aware of what they are learning and to supplement and amend the curriculum in our home to meet my personal education requirements.

Then I read articles like this: The Long Reach of Teachers Unions.

The largest political campaign spender in America is not a megacorporation, such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, or ExxonMobil. It isn’t an industry association, like the American Bankers Association or the National Association of Realtors. It’s not even a labor federation, like the AFL-CIO. If you combine the campaign spending of all those entities it does not match the amount spent by the National Education Association, the public-sector labor union that represents some 2.3 million K–12 public school teachers and nearly a million education support workers (bus drivers, custodians, food service employees), retirees, and college student members. NEA members alone make up more than half of union members working for local governments, by far the most unionized segment of the U.S. economy.

So if you think you don’t spend money on political campaigns – think again.  For Massachusetts, the amount spent per teacher on politics is $81.24.  Total spending for the year $5.7 million dollars.  Millions of dollars spent to advocate for a broken system dedicated to maintaining the status quo.

Look at one of the big ticket items they spent these funds to support:

Two very large donations concerned a noneducation issue on which NEA has been active: health care. The union contributed $450,000 to Health Care for America Now (AFT chipped in another $125,000) and $275,000 to the National Coalition on Health Care (AFT, $10,000). Last year, NEA president Dennis Van Roekel was part of the labor coalition that persuaded the White House to delay the implementation of the “Cadillac” excise tax on health care coverage, but only when it applied to union members.

No wonder the local teacher’s union won’t negotiate health care concessions.  They’ve got a few extra years before those unwieldy “Cadillac plans” come into the penalty phase.  Once that happens then they will negotiate just enough to avoid the excise tax.  And we, the taxpayer, get to pay both bills.

As we go through the summer, negotiations continue with principals and teachers over contracts and the ever present issue of health care. We’ve listened to budget talks for weeks about how the health care costs are crippling the school budget and have resulted in layoffs, increased class sizes and decreased offerings for our students.

We are now 13 days past this post and this article and still Mr Wood and Mr Toohey haven’t bothered to return the Eagle Tribune’s calls regarding their unwillingness to change to the Mayor’s health care plan. This bothers me especially because Mr Wood and Mr Toohey are 2/3 of the negotiating team that is working with the teacher’s union to finally sign a contract that hopefully switches the teachers to the Mayor’s Value Option Plan.

This strikes me as very poor leadership by these high profile members of the School Committee; Mr Toohey is the current president and Mr Wood is the former president. Both seem to feel it is appropriate to negotiate from the position of “take what we tell you is the best health care plan available – despite it not being good enough for us.” This is one of the largest problems I have with national health care reform; the plan forced by law on all of the citizens does not apply to members of Congress. I like this even less when it happens locally and is perpetuated by people in my own neighborhood!

I’m not sure what really happened in this meeting with the principals but I’m betting the truth lies someplace in the middle. The School Committee found quite a bit of cash to reward the interim superintendent and to hopefully entice a new superintendent to our city and every other union who has switched health care has gotten something in return so I can understand the principals looking for a carrot in this negotiation. This is how negotiations work – each side pushes and pulls to work out something in the middle of what one side wants and what the other side offers.

Of course the principals are just a few individuals and the real budget impact will only be seen when the Teacher’s Union adopts the Value Option Plan. I’m betting with this article that a health care concession won’t be reached any time soon with the 600 members of the teacher’s union. I am a little leery of his quote about doubling premiums last contract – one of the sticking points in one of the last union contracts negotiated while I still worked at Shaw’s Supermarkets was health care. The union balked at the unreasonable concept of union workers paying any amount for health care. The union actually went on strike that year because $2 per week per employee for health insurance premiums was unfair. So until I know what that doubling is in actual dollars I’m not going to give it too much weight.

While I don’t usually give much weight to the comments because they are generally the same dozen trolls all feeding each other I noted a few who echoed rumors I’ve heard around town that Mr Harvey doesn’t act on the will of the entire body of teachers but listens closely to a few more vocal groups. If this is true I think perhaps the teachers need to vote in a new spokesperson and negotiator.

Tonight’s School Committee meeting will be the last one of the year to deal with the 2010-2011 budget.  If there’s anything you’d like to say about the budget this is pretty much the last chance open forum on the issue.  If you would like to see the proposed budget they’ve posted a link to the very large pdf here.

The last School Committee meeting was pretty much a rubber stamp approval of the budget by the Committee and then a round of pats on the back for everyone.

A few parents got up to speak.  They were frustrated with the cuts in the budget and felt people didn’t know how badly programs are affected.  I wonder where these parents were all year.  I certainly never saw them at any of the other meetings I attended over the school year.  Parents can’t just show up at budget time and expect the committee to just pull money out of air for their children’s programs!  We need to band together and fight how this fiasco is being funded at the state level if we want anything to change in our town.  I can’t be the only one emailing my representatives and looking for people to speak to on beacon hill!

Along the way someone on the committee was bright enough to figure out that they sounded awfully obnoxious with all their comments about how well they did this year; so they then each took 20 minutes to bemoan the state of the economy and how that made this an awful budget to work with.  Education in Haverhill is in dire straits.  Those poor children are missing out.  None of us are happy with this budget.  Services are at a bare minimum across the board.  Once they felt they’d been appropriately contrite the meeting moved along to new business.

The Mayor proposed that those non union employees of the Haverhill School Department including the School Committee adopt the health plan they are currently trying to convince the unions to accept.  This was met with a surprising amount of contention.  The committee felt the employees should be notified and asked if this is something they want to happen.  Apparently the committee doesn’t understand how executive decisions are made when unions aren’t involved.  No one I know who is non union ever gets a say in benefit changes.  The companies simply say “Here’s your new insurance plan.” or “Here’s the new rate for your insurance plan.”  or “Here’s the pay cut we’ve instituted.”  While I can appreciate letting people know that as of X date your plan is changing… I don’t understand having endless discussion on the topic – especially if this is the plan you want all of the unions to adopt!

Another disappointingly business as usual meeting of the Haverhill School Committee.

With whomever decided Dr Buchanan’s decision to cancel school after the weather bureau changed its forecast was an offense worthy of a grievance!

I hadn’t considered the events of Wednesday, December 9th to be anything other than an inconvenience brought on by the simple fact that weather in New England is unpredictable.  Storms spring up unexpectedly, linger longer than they were forecast, or drop differing precipitation depths often.  I’ve often mused that being the weatherman must be nice because no one really expects you to be completely accurate!

When the Thursday, December 10th School Committee Meeting reached the Hillie Highlights portion the Superintendent took a moment to speak about the storm and his decisions regarding the initial delay and subsequent closing of school.  He mentioned unhappy parents – but when he further mentioned the possibility of a grievance by employees I was stunned.  The followup article in the Eagle Tribune furthered my disappointment and disbelief.

This overly litigious society needs to step back and look at itself.  Would our city have been better served by ignoring the change in forecast and bringing all of the students into school?  If one of the buses had failed to make the climb up the hill to Golden Hill and Nettle and someone had been injured – would that have been better?  Is there no provision in the contract for making the best decision possible for the students and employees with the information currently available and then when new information arrives amending the decisions?  Have we completely lost our ability to recognize and utilize common sense?  I fear we have.