Yard Sales Are So 2009

Saw this on Route 172 this morning.

Want to Understand What's Wrong With Bedford's Teachers Union?

The following is a statement from Graham Anderson, member of the BCSD board:

Statement Regarding BTA Contract – August 31, 2010

Madame President, fellow members of the Board of Education, and Administration – thank you in advance for granting me this opportunity to speak.  The following remarks represent my personal opinions and do not necessarily represent those of the Board of Education.

Because we do not have the ability to change the fundamental nature of our District’s employee contracts, I believe we delay making tough decisions and ultimately make the future more painful for our students, taxpayers and employees.  We vote today to make a slight improvement over the status quo, which is why I am very reluctantly voting “yes” for the proposed BTA contract.  A deal is better than no deal – and although we make important inroads in areas such as health insurance and we begin the process of changing our spending trajectory, we fall short of the fundamental rethinking of contracts necessary for success in the future.

In agreeing to a contract, we grant our able Superintendent and Administration the freedom to set aside contentious negotiations and focus more appropriately on educating our students.  District teachers can now do the same. 

Nevertheless, today we agree to a contract that does not solve the fundamental problem our district faces.  The Bedford Central School District has incurred contractual obligations that it cannot afford to meet in the future.  Our district cannot meet such obligations because it cannot secure voter approval to raise tax rates to a level high enough to support our employee contracts.  We know this is the case from our In Focus Survey conducted last year. 

For a great many years in the past, school districts underpaid teachers and compensated them instead with increased benefits and generous contractual terms.  Over time, however, teachers’ salaries improved, but these benefits and contractual terms accumulated to impose substantial costs and prevent needed change.  Therefore, to resolve this problem, our District must change the fundamental nature of the contracts it has entered into and reduce the growth rate of its spending.  Today, we agree to incremental alterations rather than substantial changes.

I want to be out of the business of firing classroom teachers and back in the very difficult business of determining how to educate our children properly and prepare them to compete in the global markets of the 21^st century.  With the approval of this contract, we are not out of the business of firing teachers and will almost certainly have to do so in the next several years.  Moreover, we do not have the financial flexibility to increase the elementary school day by 1 hour to bring it more in line with regional averages, to introduce foreign language education into elementary schools, or to provide more compelling computer science and information technology skills and education that our middle and high school children definitely need in order to become college or career ready.  Therefore, we are not making some important progress we need to make toward preparing our students to compete effectively in a global market.

One of the major difficulties we face is that our district is primarily financed by local property taxes.  The proverbial straw has broken the camel’s back and we cannot afford to return to mid to high single digit annual tax increases.  Our taxes are some of the highest in the country and the situation is grim for homeowners.  New York Metro Area home prices are the lowest since 2004.  Home prices do not appear to be headed higher anytime soon so increasing local property taxes becomes a heavier burden with each tax year – especially in an economic climate where private sector jobs are scarce. 

The benefits packages (both health and pension) for the employees of our schools have become unaffordable when combined with contractually and legislatively mandated salary increases.  Most taxpayers do not know that under “step schedules” teacher salaries rise by several percentage points even before cost-of-living adjustments.  Moreover, benefits now total nearly 30 percent of the total compensation package, far exceeding private-sector averages.

  District employment contracts do not enable us to keep combined wage and benefits increases to 3% or less per year.  If we cannot keep increases to such a supportable level, we must draw down reserves or let go of more teachers and programs or do both.  Therefore, once prudent reserves are exhausted, our district will have to make annual staff cuts just to pay teachers for staying on for one more year.  

     What can we do?  Today, we can do nothing without the help of the BTA.  I encourage the teachers to help the BTA reinvent itself.  I would like to see the BTA become a champion of public service instead of primarily a defender of the current salary and benefits of its own, more senior members.  Instead of demonstrating endless obsession with wages and conditions in a contract that exceeds 100 pages, I challenge the BTA to be a force of change to improve the quality of education in our schools.  We can no longer afford to reward failure and laud mediocrity.  We desperately need fresh ideas on the local level to combat the Washington policy wonks and non-governmental agencies that have elegant “solutions” that never seem to work.  I would like to see the BTA serve as a constructive force for change rather than an obstructive force bent on getting its “fair share” to the detriment of the students its members purport to serve.  We can only improve our financial situation and our schools with the support of the employees willing to make a fresh start and scrap preconceived notions, outdated ideas, and archaic contracts.

More specifically, we need to remove regulations that strictly define specific staff positions and the use of school time.  We need to become more flexible.  Subjects and programs do not have the same requirements and time commitments and we need to recognize this fact.  We need to remove lockstep pay and alter teacher compensation, including benefits and pensions, to increase rewards for teachers who have the most marketable skills, who have the best results and who contribute the most to improving student performance.  We should work with the BTA to define what this means for our District and how to implement it. 

We need to move toward a post-Us/Them world and toward a more civic minded community so that together we and the BTA can find mutual support for the difficult, inevitable changes that we are facing in our public finances and in our educational system.  Although we were not able to do so today, in the future I hope we will be able to work together more effectively and not at cross purposes to make Bedford Central a leading district in the nation and avoid the bunker mentality that will lead us to irrelevance.

Thank you for your time and patience this morning.