A View on the WPS Teacher Contract
When the Woodstock town budget came up for vote last spring, we were told by the Board of Education that they had very little leeway in their budgeting, due to contractual and state mandated obligations, fuel costs, etc. At the time I wondered what discussion would take place when the teachers' contract came up for renewal.
Friday, December 5th, a legal notice was placed in your paper which informed us that the Town Clerk had received a signed contract between the Woodstock Board of Education and the Woodstock Association of Teachers. The contract was filed November 26th, and the terms are binding unless a special town meeting is called and convened by December 25th.
The contract is posted in full on the woodstockschools.net web site (PDF Below), in the Board Members and Information section under the Board of Education heading of the District drop down menu. Hats off to a local blog which posted this guidance, making it easy to locate.
Our teachers are given all the benefits any good employee deserves: 15 days paid sick leave mandated by the state, which rolls over from year to year if not used. A PPO health insurance plan with a $20 copay for office visits and $5 for generic prescriptions. The employee pays 15.5% of the cost in the year ending July '10, 16.5% in FY '11, 17.5% in FY '12, with an option to opt instead for a cheaper Health Savings Account plan to which the Board will contribute $1,000. There is life insurance coverage, access to retirement annuities, arrangements for bereavement leave, personal days, funds and time off for professional development, some tuition reimbursement, full pay during jury duty, and arrangements for paid leave on the birth or adoption of a child. The teachers are expected to work 189 days per year, 7 hours per day on site with 30 minutes off for lunch.
The pay scale for fiscal year '10 ranges from $38,692 (beginning salary with a bachelor's degree) up to $72,143 (top salary for an individual with further education beyond a master's degree), not including stipends. Currently (FY '09) there are 74 teachers in this program, most of whom (59) have master's degrees. In FY '10 32 teachers will be eligible for the highest pay level for those with masters' degrees: $68,412. Salaries are arranged in 13 steps for each degree level; presumably an individual advances one step each year. Raises range from 1.6 - 2.3% for an individual staying at the same step from year to year (those already at top salary). For those moving from one step to the next, most raises are scheduled at around 6% per year. Because so many teachers are already at the highest step for their degree, the total increase is under 4% per year.
This review was done over the course of a blustery Sunday afternoon and you will have to delve into the numbers yourself to confirm the accuracy of what I've stated above. My main purpose is to give voters an opportunity to consider whether this contract is within their means and reflects their priorities, before the deadline for contesting it is over. Personally I believe this is the kind of compensation package one would want ones employees to have. We all should have access to the benefits mentioned. However I don't know if our society will be able to continue to maintain this sort of lifestyle in the years to come — this contract runs through June of 2012.
In order to have a town meeting the selectmen would have to call it either on their own initiative or on demand from a group of citizens, and it would have to be published in this newspaper 5 days previous to the meeting. Since the 25th of December is a holiday it would have to be in the paper published December 12th. So I believe it is already too late to contest the contract, but perhaps I am misreading some of the rules. In either case, review the contract, and if you are content with it, sit tight. If not, contact the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Education and give them your feedback.
Rebecca Hyde
North Woodstock
WPS Teacher Contract (PDF)
Well I guess everybody is happy with the new contract? Thank you for posting it, Hope every tax payer can afford it .
Maxine, It's a stretch to say "everybody " is happy with the new contract. My guess is that most everybody doesn't even know it exists unless they read the second to last page far bottom left hand corner of the Villager paper. Maybe a discussion about it in the Spotlight on Education a month ago would have raised some more awareness. All in all I think the BOE probably did their best with the limited ability they actually have to bargain. And honestly, I think most of the teachers deserve it.
WSJ: K-12 Schools Slashing Costs
West Hartford And Teachers Reach Contract Agreement
The fact remains that this will cost the town more at a time when we can least afford any new expense.
recession 1 n. 1. a period of economic decline when production, employment, and earnings fall below normal levels. Except in Woodstock?
This is not about Children or education its about the paycheck of teachers, BOE spending. There are a lot of qualified teachers who would love the job, even for less pay.
Should we pay teachers more?
Almost certainly. As Dennis Miller once said, the people in charge of our children’s futures should not be worried about whether they can afford genuine Ho-Ho’s or only stale generic knock-offs.
But while higher teacher pay will undoubtedly be necessary in my fantasy school-world, until there are major institutional reforms, it won’t do any good. Teacher pay is, like foreign aid, a necessary but not sufficient condition. The world will not eradicate polio without spending a lot of money on the task. But that doesn’t mean that the first order of business is to raise a bunch of money, and then hand it to doctors to figure out what to do with. The first thing you have to do is build an organization that is capable of using the money to good effect. Otherwise, you’ll just get what you get out of most foreign aid efforts: richer government employees.
I have no problem with richer government employees. But I do not think that the primary job of government is to enrich them. The government’s job is to obtain we, the taxpayers, good value for money.
The school system is dysfunctional on all sides. On one side, you’ve got a bureaucracy so terrified that a teacher will make a mistake that it sets up “everything not compulsory is forbidden” rules. I’m not talking about forcing people to do things that they may not want to do, but which actually further the institution’s goals, like implementing Direct Instruction. I’m talking about detailed rules specifying how many bathroom breaks a teacher can take. And the fact that each school is complying with so many state, federal, and local regulations that it’s a wonder they can ever take a break from filling out forms to teach a class. We’re treating educated professionals like they’re would-be criminals who need to be watched every second lest they steal the chalk.
On the other side, you have an equally bureaucratic union, and a set of job protection rules that make it virtually impossible to fire anyone for poor performance, or reward them for good. I don’t think anyone who has actually gone through the school system thinks that length of service is a good measure of teaching effectiveness, but that’s how they’re paid–seniority, and accumulation of usually thoroughly worthless educational credentials. And unless they start molesting their charges, it’s basically impossible to fire them.
We need to start treating teachers like professionals. We need to start paying them like professionals. And we need to start holding them accountable like professionals. Doing one or two out of three won’t improve anything, except perhaps some teacher bank accounts.