PEACE AND HARMONY REIGN IN ILLINOIS
In the last nine and a half years there has only been thirty-seven teacher strikes in the state of Illinois. That’s four strikes a year during that time period. We are in a period of unprecedented peace and harmony when it comes to school board and teacher union negotiations.
I hereby award a prestigious Golden Chalk Award to all school boards who rewarded their teachers with salary and benefits that were at least adequate or better, and showed an understanding of how important and difficult the job of teaching is.
Another Golden Chalk Award goes to school board members and teacher negotiating teams who implemented some very creative settlements that avoided what otherwise would have been very bitter battles.
Another award goes to parents and students who supported their teachers during some very difficult negotiations and whose support led to many school board concessions.
An award to school board members, teachers, and community leaders who worked very hard to get tax increase referendums passed and thereby solved the problems that come with underfunded schools.
A special Golden Chalk Award to teachers who refused to allow their school districts to use the current financial crisis as an excuse to break contracts and to demand that teachers give back hard-earned salary and benefits.
There are many people working very hard to break teacher unions, and one of their tactics is to try to convince the public that teacher unions constantly use strikes as a weapon that bankrupts school districts and causes large amount of lost class time for students. That certainly has not been the case here in Illinois during the last decade. The teacher unions here in Illinois are hardly the militant crusaders that anti union organizations have painted them to be. Most school boards are also made up of community members who try to do what is best for the schools, the students, the community, and the hard-working teachers.
Readers of this blog will probably note that this post has been one of the most positive, docile, mellow and syrupy ones that I’ve ever written when it comes to school negotiations. Have I gone soft? Don’t worry, one of my next blogs will be advocating a teacher “sit in” at the state capitol until legislators agree to stop blaming teachers and public employees for the state’s dire financial situation. The “sit in” will continue until legislators also agree to fully fund the teacher pension system and stop conspiring to lower agreed upon compensation. If the “sit in” doesn’t work, every teacher in Illinois should go on strike until the legislature meets our demands. Oops, did I say, strike? So much for the syrupy post and the peaceful decade.
I think this notion that folks are “blaming teachers and public employees for the state’s dire financial situation” is misguided, inflammatory, and makes it harder to find a solution.
The reality is that most states depend on individual and corporate income taxes for the primary revenue flow, and incomes are generally down – especially in the rust-belt states like Illinois and Ohio. The consequence of that is that there’s just less money coming into the state treasury to fund all the programs and service we’ve come to expect our states to deliver.
Individual incomes are down because many workers have been laid off – over 100,000 jobs lost in Ohio in the past decade. The double whammy for many of those workers has been that not only have they lost their jobs, but many local school districts have – here in Ohio at least – decided to put new property taxes on the ballot to make up for the lost state funding. Less/no wages and higher property taxes is creating a good deal of pain for many families.
If you look at where the money goes in education, 80-90% of it is for wages and benefits, especially for teachers. I’m not saying that’s a problem. We WANT as much of the school budget as possible to be spent on the folks who are at the point of service delivery. We WANT effective teachers to feel appreciated and motivated.
And I appreciate that teachers were woefully underpaid in years past, largely because it was assumed that the teacher would be woman, and not the primary breadwinner – and that therefore wage discrimination was okay. I think it’s a good thing that teachers have been able to bargain for decent salaries and outstanding pensions. As the father of a daughter who is a teacher, I’m glad those days are largely over.
But while our economy is down, and hopefully recovering, we’ve got to figure out how to recalibrate our public sector spending to capacity of the private sector. Demanding that state funding be restored to schools so that teacher salaries/benefits can be kept untouched also means demanding that less money be spent on the other two primary budget items in our state (and I suspect yours as well), Medicaid and the corrections system.
So no, teachers aren’t the problem unless they choose to make themselves the problem by demanding raises and benefits increases when the taxpayers who fund those things are suffering.
It’s preferable that they be part of the solution, and that may mean small raises, if any, for a while – just like we’re seeing in the private sector. In some districts, it might even mean some pay cuts if the local economy is bad.
The alternative is what we’re already seeing in many highly school districts – some pretty highly regarded – the need to balance the budget by laying off teachers and terminating programs and services. The math is clear – if the funds available are constant, or in some cases declining, demands for higher salaries and benefits will result in young teachers – up to their eyeballs in student loan debt – getting laid off.
Paul Lambert
January 12, 2012 at 7:40 am
There have been dozens of articles in the Chicago Tribune over the past two years blaming teachers and public employees for the huge state pension debt. Radio advertisements blaming the pension crisis on teatchers and public employees. Very blatant attacks. I can only speak about Illinois, but believe me, the blame game has been going full bore in this state. What really galls the teachers is that we have payed into our retirement system from each paycheck and the state took our pension money and used it for other purposes, therefore causing millions of dollars in deficits. Now people blame high teacher pensions for the problem.
I have no problem with teachers giving up raises and benefits when they work in highly paying districts that are in financial trouble. I am always skeptical about school boards that cry about financial difficulties right before negotiations. Our school board always took money out of the Education Fund (which payed teacher salaries), and then put that money into other funds such as Buildings and Grounds, and then claimed there was no money for teacher raises. Have you ever attended any of the workshops on negotiations that are given by the State School Boards Assoc.? They learn every trick in the book about hiding finances and similar negotiation tactics. Sorry I’m so negative, but I was part of three negotiations and I personally have seen the games that go on.
alkleen
January 12, 2012 at 9:58 pm
The negotiations game is played slightly differently in every state I imagine, with the boundaries of the playing field set by that state’s laws governing labor relations and school finance. For example, we (in Ohio) can’t hide money in the way you describe. I think another indication about how things are different between our two states is that you cite 37 teachers strikes in a decade as being an indication of relative calmness, while here – and our states are about the same size – we’ve had very few teacher strikes in the past 30 years.
But it’s not an indication of health – it’s an indication of how lop-sided the negotiation process has been in our state, with the unions holding the better hand because of our labor laws.
Yet, I’m not blaming this on the unions or the rank and file teachers. We have the negotiations environment we do because over the years, the teachers’ unions have become very powerful politcally, both locally and at the state level. But the fault isn’t the unions, it’s the ignorance and apathy of the general public, who let the conversation be so one-sided.
The thing about politics is that organization and money wins out over ignorance and apathy every time. In the process of governing a school district, the teachers’ unions are interested, engaged, and investing every single day (through their union dues). And when it comes time to vote on union matters, I bet the turnout of the membership is very high.
Contrast that to the way the general public engages in school governance. Almost no one shows up at school board meetings, and it’s a good turnout when half show up to vote on tax levies, or who they want to represent them on the school board. But the unions are certainly interested in who sits on the school board, and are willing to throw both money and manpower behind the candidates they feel will be supportive when it comes time to negotiate a contract. In our district, I’m the first person to be elected to our school board for years who wasn’t endorsed by the union. And they weren’t afraid to run a below-the-radar smear campaign among their membership.
I believe the greatest danger to our nation isn’t a foreign country who means us ill, but the ignorance and apathy of our own people. When the vast majority of us don’t understand how democracy works, and don’t have any interest in engaging in the process, then the small minority who does gets to rule all of us.
What’s happening in this public/private sector tension is that the ignorant and apathetic majority is having a little awakening, brought on by experiencing – many for the first time – a tough economic downturn in our country. With a little help from folks like me, they’re beginning to connect the dots between their tax bills and the comp/benefits of public sector workers, and they’re not liking what they find. And because it’s a surprise, they’re overreacting – wanting to go to war with the public sector unions.
Except not really. As happened in many of the Rust Belt states in the past couple of years, our Governor successful pushed for laws to be passed that would curtail some of the power of the public sector unions. But our state constitution allows for laws to be repealed by public referendum, and these laws were voted down by the 3-2 margin, with big big spending by the unions. Once again, the public talked big, but failed to show up when it counts.
I, and a few others in our state, continue the battle to educate voters in our state how things work, and what their responsibilities are in the process. We’re non-partisan, and have a wide range of political views. All we’re interested in is getting the facts out there, and motivating the public to engage.
So that’s why I reacted to original assertion. It sounds like there are some significant differences in the political environments of our two states, and your assertion may be valid there. Here, no one is saying that the unions are being blamed for our state’s fiscal problems except the unions themselves, and they’re doing it to stir up their own membership, not to educate the public.
Thanks for creating this place for dialog, and for letting the conversation be more than sound-bites.
Paul Lambert
January 13, 2012 at 7:41 am
You certainly are correct about public apathy. I went to many school board meetings and there was almost never anyone from the public who attended. I know this is not always true in affluent and well educated communities, but in poorer, less educated areas it is sadly often the case.
I know I’ve written about this several times, but I will say it again. Entertainment, popular culture, sports, etc. dominate the free time of most people. Given a choice of watching their favorite television show or attending a school board meeting, I think we know what the general public would choose.
alkleen
January 16, 2012 at 11:08 am