Keep those cards and letters coming in...

Recently, I received a letter from City Council At-Large Candidate Bill Deans asking the School Committee to consider a number of points regarding the salaries of teachers, and their impact on the school budget. His analysis of the most recent teacher's contract is exhaustive, and he raises a number of very important points.

Over the next week, I would like to try to respond to the points he has made, by sharing his thoughts and then sharing mine. At the end, I will write a post that can be considered as my "position" on the issue of teacher salaries; as you know, we will be beginning negotiations for a new teacher contract this winter to replace the one that expires next June 30th.

Doing so is a tricky business, for several reasons. The first and most obvious one is that I am speaking for myself, not any other SC member, nor the School Administration, nor the SC as a whole. The second is that while I have already participated in a contract negotiation with the teachers (6 years ago), I obviously do not know if I will be re-elected, although if I am, I'm prepared to serve as a member of the SC team doing the negotiations. So-- please understand that my statements with regard to any negotiated contract to be done in the future represent broad ideas, do not reflect any particular strategy to be engaged in. Finally, I am offering responses, not necessarily defending either the status quo, or decisions that were made by negotiating teams 20 years ago for reasons that I'm sure made sense at the time, but have created issues we need to deal with know, as the deferred bills come due. His letter was extensive (5 pages), and I am exploring some way to link to it on my site. Until then, I will break out his many points and respond to them a few at a time.

Mr. Deans noted that the largest single item in entire City budget is the school system; as it is in virtually every community in the Commonwealth that operates schools.

Worth noting is that nearly salaries make up the majority of those expenses that are operationally related. While this may seem unreasonable, it actually makes a lot of sense. Schools are a service-based enterprise, and in most human service organizations, salaries represent by far the largest item in the budget. The reason is clear. The product is quality education for children; teachers, and their supervisors deliver that product with the help of resources like curriculum and supplies. Although there has been a tendency to try to frame the operations of schools as if they were businesses, designed to make a profit, they aren't. They produce responsible citizens, whose creativity and resourcefulness prepares them for life in the reality-based world. I fully agree, and have for six years, that they should be run as efficiently as possible, and that there should be ongoing measures of accountability in place that can indicate issues immediately, and not quarterly.

Next up, specific elements of teacher salary noted by Mr. Deans.