When voters back in March overwhelmingly approved the renewal of the parcel tax, we warned the voters that this was not going to cover the entire deficit. In addition to the six million dollars funded by the parcel tax, there was another three million structural deficit.
Last week, the situation became heated as a large number of teachers came to the school board meeting to complain about potential plans for a 5.5 percent cut.
As Davis Teacher’s Association President Gail Mitchell said at the time: “Two weeks ago, the board asked us to consider a 5.5 percent permanent, ongoing pay cut. What I hear from teacher after teacher, at site after site, is: ‘I can’t afford to see my paycheck shrink any further.’ “
Superintendent Winfred Roberson had thrown fuel on the fire with a clause in his new contract where the district would have reimbursed him with $15,000 per year to get his doctoral degree.
Superintendent Roberson has backed off that, sending an email indicating, “I regret that the tuition reimbursement has become a distraction in the workplace. … I will not accept reimbursement for tuition costs.”
Some have called for teachers to take concessions to do their part to close this huge and persistent structural deficit.
However, DTA President Gail Mitchell has been resisting that call. In an Op-Ed in the Davis Enterprise she wrote: “On April 20, with just weeks to go before the end of the school year, the district’s negotiating team surprised the Davis Teachers Association with a proposal for a 5.5 percent permanent, ongoing pay cut for all teachers.”
She writes, “This comes at a time when teachers are already hurting. We have had no cost-of-living adjustment since 2006 (and only 1 percent then), amounting to an effective 15 percent pay cut due to cumulative inflation.”
She fails to note, of course, that while the district has not given teachers a COLA since 2006, the reason for that has been the cutting of more than $10 million annually from the state.
And the district has, in fact, asked the voters four times since 2006 to pass parcel taxes.
There is little doubt that this has negatively impacted the teachers.
As Ms. Mitchell notes, “Meanwhile, the cost to employees for health benefits has skyrocketed. The cheapest family health care plan, for example, now costs a teacher $9,468 per year out of pocket – giving Davis the dubious distinction of offering some of the worst benefits in our region.”
She adds, “At the same time, our savings accounts are still feeling the effects of last year’s one-time 2.7 percent pay reduction due to furloughs.”
She is not wrong on this.
So, we sympathize greatly when she writes, “As I talk to teacher after teacher, at school after school, I hear the same message: We simply cannot afford to give up any more of our salary.”
However, we also think she puts the blame in the wrong place. Instead of acknowledging the statewide budget cuts, she puts the blame locally.
She writes, “We agree that the school district needs to get its financial house in order. The district’s structural deficit has been identified since at least 2006.”
She argues, “Unfortunately, the district has done little to address it, failing year after year to implement a systematic review of its finances to determine what programming we can and cannot afford. The district repeatedly has rejected recommendations from the Davis Teachers Association to institute a freeze on new spending.”
It is a strange argument, because cutting programs means laying people, particularly teachers, off.
She writes, “It’s time for a new approach in the Davis Joint Unified School District, one that does not count on teachers to subsidize new program and positions that we can’t afford.”
She argues, “As teachers and taxpayers living on a limited salary, we have some insight into how to come to a solution. After all, we sign rental agreements and mortgages only after we’ve determined whether we can pay for them, and we don’t buy things we can’t afford. Like most of you, we live within our means.”
However, her recommendations are somewhat strange.
She writes, “Rely on our district’s hefty 17 percent emergency reserve in the next few months as we formulate a thoughtful, districtwide plan for both program and budget.”
While the district’s reserve is somewhat over what is legally mandated and therefore unusable, using the reserve, which they have a number of times in the past, is essentially dipping into limited one-time monies. This seems to be precisely what she otherwise suggests the district avoid when she argues we need to change our ways.
She continues, “Freeze new spending until the current crisis is over.”
For the most part I believe the district has done that. It would be helpful if she would identify what new spending the district has undertaken in the last five years.
She adds, “Put every teacher in a classroom to minimize the impact on class sizes. (Many teachers are currently released for other duties that may be valuable, but that we can no longer afford.)”
Ironically, cutting programs would mean less teachers potentially, and you end up with the same problem.
She adds, “Carefully scrutinize every expenditure to get rid of any costs that are not absolutely necessary.”
The district has done this several times in the past to avoid or minimize layoffs. It is difficult to believe that there are programs that they still would need to cut.
She concludes, “And, just like we do with our own families, turn to staff, parents and the community to work together on a balanced budget for balanced programming that we can all afford.”
Again, it seems like something they have had to do.
“We’re concerned that cutting teacher salaries is the first idea proposed by district leaders, instead of a last resort,” she said.
Again, that seems like an odd statement, given how far down the road we are on this.
She continues, “Before the district contemplates the drastic step of reducing pay for the teachers who already do so much, we must demand that every other cost-cutting measure be considered.”
It is hard to imagine there is much more the district can do. This is not exactly a new problem, the district has attempted to cut everywhere it can. It has managed to minimize cutting teachers and programs. But while cutting programs sounds like a good idea, we have to understand cutting programs means laying off teachers and laying off teachers means increasing class sizes – the exact thing the teachers are telling us to avoid.
Until the economy turns around, there is a no-win situation. No one wants to tell teachers to take pay cuts. Teachers in our view are underpaid as it is. But right now, there is not a whole lot of choice.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Interesting comment about teachers not in classroom. Any idea how many that is?
The Republican choke hold made possible by the 2/3 rule at the state level and the policy of non-cooperation by the Republicans in the congress has led to an economy with expansion of public sector jobs yet a contraction of public sector jobs. We now see this come home to roost in Davis where the locals have given a lot extra and its still not enough.
It is fair to assume that finances will be picking up as the economy slowly is recovering and with a windfall to the state from Facebook going public due tapping any excess in the reserve seems reasonable. You didn’t say how Jerry Brown’s tax plan and proposed trigger cuts play into the district’s budgeting assumption and decisions.
It does seem fair for the district, as the union requests, to go through their entire budget before going for salary cuts.
I do sympathize with her saying this “After all, we sign rental agreements and mortgages only after we’ve determined whether we can pay for them, and we don’t buy things we can’t afford. Like most of you, we live within our means.” This is why I was critical of of Arnold spending every penny during the windfall from Google going public on raises for state workers and to school budgets that would flow through as pay increases, before his re-election only to take them away through budget cuts and furloughs when they were not sustainable. People take actions based on those contracts. She is right they plan and they buy homes, they make long term commitments. They don’t anticipate having the rug pulled out from under them with pay cuts on top of inflation. If only we still had that car tax money he cut creating the structural deficit at the state level!
I do like her idea of putting everyone they can back into the classroom, softening the blow to the kids, as they issue their final round of pink slips. I can also see class sizes going up even higher.
As austerity squeezes school teachers here at home it is going to be interesting to see how much teachers can take before we start looking like the streets of Athens. Will the teachers set up tents at the district office across from Occupy! Woodland has a similar proposal to cut around the same amount of pay and the teachers there, where I work, are also resisting. This might play out differently in different districts but my guess is there will be a few places where strikes are possible. This could get ugly. Of course austerity is ugly.
should read “expansion of private sector jobs”
Soda, there are all sorts of people not in classrooms. Mentors for new teachers, Principals, Vice Principal, Superintendents, program coordinators, Athletic Directors, just to name a few off the top of my head. Its not like these people aren’t doing important work its just that, as Parkinson’s law states, thing expand to the space allowed. I’ve always though that administrators should do a little teaching. It would keep them humble.
SODA: [i]Interesting comment about teachers not in classroom. Any idea how many that is?[/i]
To tag onto Mr. Toad’s response, Mitchell was not specific enough in her comment to know exactly what she meant. She could also have referred to librarians, elementary music teachers, elementary science teachers, and reading specialists, all of whom have teaching credentials, but are not “regular” classroom teachers. Although that seems like an elegant solution, it ignores the fact that those positions are specifically funded through Measure C to do those jobs. If they were all converted to regular classroom teachers, it is highly doubtful that they could carry out their originally assigned portfolio.
Duplicating a comment I made to Gail Mitchell’s piece in the Enterprise (here ([url]http://www.davisenterprise.com/opinion/opinion-columns/value-and-respect-our-educators/[/url])):
“On April 20, with just weeks to go before the end of the school year, the district’s negotiating team surprised the Davis Teachers Association with a proposal for a 5.5 percent permanent, ongoing pay cut for all teachers.”
If one had been following school board discussions, this shouldn’t have been a surprise.
At the Feb. 2 school board meeting, they discussed the full impact of the deficit on the district budget, agenda item V.e. at http://davis.csbaagendaonline.net/cgi-bin/WebObjects/davis-eAgenda.woa/wa/displayCalendar, and identified the need to close a $3.5 million structural deficit. The video archive of the meeting at davismedia.org indicates that the DTA reps did not attend that part of the school board meeting.
At the Feb. 16 school board meeting, the district staff laid out different scenarios to close a $3.5 million structural deficit (agenda item V.c.). Plan A proposed a 5.5% salary cut across the board (all employees) to close the entire deficit without layoffs. Plan B proposed all cuts, including about 50 FTE of teaching staff. Plan C proposed a 3% salary cut and some layoffs. Ms. Mitchell was present at that meeting, because she offered public comment on that item in the video archive. So the DTA was aware of this specific scenario (a 5.5% proposed cut) at least two months before April 20.
It’s reasonable if teachers collectively choose to reject this particular solution (5.5% salary cut), instead possibly opting for all layoffs, but it distorts the truth to suggest that this proposal was a complete surprise.
[quote]Although that seems like an elegant solution, it ignores the fact that those positions are specifically funded through Measure C to do those jobs. [/quote]I think “bait and switch” is the technical term, if this is what is being proposed. Not sure the measure vote would have been the same if the measure proposed was advertised along the lines of, “these monies would be used to unsure that no teacher makes any sacrifice to get thru this current financial crisis.”
[quote]It’s reasonable if teachers collectively choose to reject this particular solution (5.5% salary cut), instead possibly opting for all layoffs, but it distorts the truth to suggest that this proposal was a complete surprise.[/quote]
Opting for layoffs is the usual “throw the new teachers under the bus” so the tenured teachers don’t have to take a pay cut. However, those new unemployed teachers cannot pay taxes, which means less money in the tax coffers of the state, which continues the economic spiral downward – and another round of layoffs. And the next time it may be the tenured teachers that get the ax. It would be much better if teachers recognized the downward spiral scenario is not even in their own best interests, and instead choose to share the sacrifice, like it or not…
They locked themselves in with their pitch but that doesn’t mean a different approach would have failed. Anyway, since, as I remember, hpierce was against Measure C, and please correct me if I am wrong, he is not a particularly good judge of what might have passed. Still there are people who work for the district who could return to the classroom as part of a solution to the structural deficit WJUSD is dealing with right now.
I suggest implementing online courses to alleviate overcrowding at Jr High and Senior High School in subjects that do not require face-to-face interaction with an instructor, i.e. Health, Psychology, Social Sciences, etc. Allow students in team sports to count participation towards their PE requirement starting in 9th grade. Expand the schedule so students have an opportunity to graduate early. Quit suspending students for “defiance” and other vague reasons. Have the teachers look at the budget and give their recommendations on where to shift, cut, save, etc. Don’t try to have the community pay for yet another school tax.
[quote]as I remember, hpierce was against Measure C, and please correct me if I am wrong,[/quote]Actually, I said I was leaning against it, as my concern was that the teachers would not respond with any willingness to “come to the plate”, if necessary. At least that comment seems to actually be prescient. I have not said how I voted. I know I would have voted against it if Ms Mitchell had said the things she is saying, representing DTA, prior to the election.
Another school tax vote is off the table for a while. Get rid of suspensions for defiance and you have [u]Lord of the Flies[/u], As a friend told a student the other day “You cannot be both oppositional and provocative” before sending him out. Now how to manage with fewer suspensions is good to look at but the adults must be able to ultimately control the environment. Without that you would have chaos.
” It would be much better if teachers recognized the downward spiral scenario is not even in their own best interests, and instead choose to share the sacrifice, like it or not…”
Easy for you to say its not your paycheck.
[quote]Easy for you to say its not your paycheck. [/quote]S, Mr Toad, will this also be your litmus test for how you view proposed concessions from other public sector employee groups, including City of Davis, Yolo County, and State? Or, are teachers too precious to be treated the same?
Getting back to the main issue… what needs to be done to resolve the DJUSD financial issues… Mr Toad & Ms Mitchel are correct… may be tough to take another direct hit to family finances…
How about: phasing needed reductions over time… for those still advancing up the “steps”, putting those increases into abeyance for a while… for those at top step, similarly reduce salary, but over a 2-3 year period.
I thought it was a bit ‘melodramatic’ to characterize the proposed salary reductions as “permanent”. Think I would have used the term ‘indefinite’. Any teacher still advancing on the column would be ~ “whole” in one or two years. I would be surprised if, when things get more “normal” (no, I don’t think the current situation is the new normal), wages/benefits will rise, but probably not dramatically so for years.
I don’t know what viewpoint I will have on other issues but I do know what it feels like when you are looking at a pay cut and a choice between all bad options and that you sure don’t want to be told what you should do by someone who has no skin in the game.
I will point out that i have believed that the amount of money Davis employees get in lieu of health benefits is much too generous. It should also be noted that the teachers contributions to their health insurance costs are already much higher than other public sector workers and what teachers receive in lieu of getting insurance through their school group is much less. In fact I think I get nothing now that I’m on my wife’s policy.
Mr Toad… did voters not put “skin in the game” by approving tax levies, including the most recent increase? Where is your “skin in the game” in opining what other public employees should do?
The Cash-in-Lieu option shall not be available to any bargaining unit member after July 1, 2011.
From my employment contract. Sucks to be me.
The headline (“Teachers Resisting the Call For Shared Sacrifice”) misses the point of the op-ed. Davis teachers ARE sacrificing: we’ve accepted furlough days in the past, had no COLA in six years, have NEVER had the full state COLA passed down to us, and have some of the worst benefits for teachers in the region.
Failure to acknowledge this sacrifice is one of the reasons why teacher morale is rock bottom right now.
Mr Toad…. I agree with you on at least one point… employees should not be able to “cash-out” unused benefit amounts. However, that has been in place for years, and those who can benefit from it have it built into their family budgets. If it was substantially reduced, as some have proposed, it would affect many employees MUCH more severely than what has been asked of teachers. I believe, in fairness, that significant reductions (2.5%, or more), should be phased, to avoid ‘toxic shock’ to the finances of the employees’ families.
BTW, despite what has been claimed by some, non-teachers put in a whole bunch more hours than the “average” teacher.
The low morale of teachers extends into the classroom and contributes to their unwillingness to deal with more than the most compliant students. This results in an increase in suspensions, etc. Teachers don’t care or unhappy and the students pick up on this and respond in kind. It is going to be a really difficult year in Davis schools if a solution can’t be found.
The only other solution is to allow teachers to reduce their hours without a reduction in benefits or time to retirement, so they can find additional employment elsewhere to supplement their family incomes. The University allows this during lean times.
” did voters not put “skin in the game” by approving tax levies, including the most recent increase? Where is your “skin in the game” in opining what other public employees should do?”
Yes, voters have been generous here in Davis, paying up possibly at the expense of other discretionary spending (just threw that in for Don Shor) but the cut that you are talking about for teachers up to 5.5% is an awful lot more than the average taxpayer has been asked to give. In fact in many budgets it would be the equivalent of doubling your real estate tax on your home, especially if you have lived here a long time and have a 1990’s tax base under prop 13.
As for not being perfectly consistent, well, shoot me, but as you agree, the cash out for health care in Davis has grown with the cost of health care in good times until it looks like the worlds largest tomato, ripe and ready to pick off. For comparison, in my district, that benefit died for those hired after 2001 in 2006 and even then it was limited to a few hundred dollars a month. Now its completely gone. Maybe you are right though and expecting City workers who have incorporated that into the family budget to have the rug pulled out all at once is too much to ask. Rifkin has raised this point too.
Still there is a difference between telling the city what it should do and telling the city employees what they should do. If ER Musser, as a taxpayer, wants to tell the trustees how they should proceed its one thing, but, for her to advise the teachers while they are being forced to choose between pay cuts for themselves or job cuts for their colleagues is the height of arrogance.
Okay maybe not arrogance but at least insensitivity.
G. Mitchell: “We have had no cost-of-living adjustment since 2006 (and only 1 percent then),…”
Actually the last ‘cost-of-living’ adjustment came in early 2008.
A more solid DTA strategy for offering alternative ideas for DJUSD budgeting would be to identify specifically other school districts that have implemented successful cost-saving measures that ours hasn’t tried yet. The list of suggestions that Gail Mitchell presented in her op-ed will probably not get far, because I think the administration thinks it has already done everything that is legally and feasibly possible.
wdf1 posts here and on the Davis Enterprise site and is clearly either a district administrator or school board member. As a public servant, why not identify yourself and your bias? (We all have them.) While not a supporter of Sue Greenwald, I admire her because she always identifies herself on these forums.
(And in answer to the obvious question, I am not identifying myself by name because of fear of retaliation, which has already happened at my school. I am, however, making clear my own bias by letting you know my stake in this debate.)
Davis Teacher: [i]is clearly either a district administrator or school board member.[/i]
I am neither. And as such, I take the same prerogative as you.
I can vouch that wdf is neither
[quote]If ER Musser, as a taxpayer, wants to tell the trustees how they should proceed its one thing, but, for her to advise the teachers while they are being forced to choose between pay cuts for themselves or job cuts for their colleagues is the height of arrogance.[/quote]
So you prefer job cuts? Job cuts means new teachers are out of work. Out of work people cannot pay taxes. That means less tax revenue for the state. Less tax revenue to the state means less funding for schools. And then another round of layoffs – only this time it will be the tenured teachers that go. Be careful what you wish for when you advocate layoffs rather than pay cuts…
ERM: am on the same page as the teachers’ supporters, and other public employees… concessions need to be made… but if you’ve ever driven a standard transmission, good luck going 40 mph in one direction, realize you need to go back, slip it into reverse, and accelerate… not good for a transmission. Remember, arguably concessions need to be made in Social Security and Medicare over the next few years… should we proceed by shifting into reverse, or slow to a stop, and back up, as needed.
The saddest part of all this is that the game is rigged against the teachers. While we squabble over how much to reduce the salaries of the modestly-paid folks who educate our children, the immodestly-paid “job creators” have succeeded in convincing a majority of our federal legislators and a significant percentage of the voting public that it wouldn’t be fair to increase their taxes. The uber-wealthy have us right where they want us: fighting for scraps in the neighborhoods while they gorge themselves in their boardrooms and country clubs (and private schools).
The degree to which our national priorities are inverted is appalling, and it makes the effort to arrive at rational decisions at the local level very frustrating.
“So you prefer job cuts?”
I prefer full funding for education. You can prefer whatever you want. Just don’t go telling teachers what choice they should make. They have a bitter pill to swallow whatever they choose and unless they seek your advise counselor it would be wise to keep your thoughts to yourself or share them with your own representatives.
I prefer full funding for education. You can prefer whatever you want. Just don’t go telling teachers what choice they should make. They have a bitter pill to swallow whatever they choose and unless they seek your advise counselor it would be wise to keep your thoughts to yourself or share them with your own representatives.
fully funding as in what? unlimited budgets? resources are always limited, and school districts always have to prioritize, or at least they should. if budgets are limited, there is always choices to be made. teachers have to share in economic pain along with everyone else.
btw, elaine can say whatever the hell she wants, she doesn’t need your permission, nor the permission of the dta.
[quote]I prefer full funding for education. You can prefer whatever you want. Just don’t go telling teachers what choice they should make. They have a bitter pill to swallow whatever they choose…[/quote]
We would all prefer full funding for education, but realistically that is not going to happen in the near (or probably far) future. I agree the teachers have a bitter pill to swallow. But the question is: is it better for teachers to allow layoffs or take a pay cut? I would argue it is actually in their own best interests to take a pay cut, for the reasons I mentioned before – it will contribute to a continual economic downward spiral that will backfire on tenured teachers…
Vive La France. Down with austerity.
There you go again why don’t you let the teachers try to figure out what is in their own best interest.
People can say whatever they want. Certainly I do but telling people who are dealing with bad choices what they should do has a kick em when they are down feel to it. Why do you feel compelled to try to advise the teachers are you afraid they are not able to make their own decisions? Did they ask you for advise?
[quote]People can say whatever they want. Certainly I do but telling people who are dealing with bad choices what they should do has a kick em when they are down feel to it. Why do you feel compelled to try to advise the teachers are you afraid they are not able to make their own decisions? Did they ask you for advise?[/quote]
I don’t understand the antagonism… it is just my opinion and the teachers are free to take it or leave it. But I know some young teachers who are terrified of losing their jobs, and I know a number of people out of work who cannot find employment. A reality check tells me it’s better to keep people employed if at all possible to keep the tax revenues continuing to flow – for everyone’s sake. However, it sounds as if you are entrenched in the notion that teachers should not take a pay cut, and in consequence prefer throwing young teachers under the bus? I’m just offering a different viewpoint…
Mr. Toad: [i]Why do you feel compelled to try to advise the teachers are you afraid they are not able to make their own decisions? Did they ask you for advise?[/i]
What concerns me is the apparent role of DTA leadership toward steering the membership toward a certain outcome. I understand that the immediate recommendation by leadership to its members was to reject this offer rather than entertaining feedback. When some of your work colleagues are going to get laid off, and your work conditions are going to get worse (bigger class sizes, less ancillary support), I think it would be better to let the membership weigh all that out and give feedback in a forum or a vote. It’s entirely likely that a vote would have rejected it anyway, but when DTA leadership voices an immediate opinion, then it’s not clear that the interests and opinions of the whole body have been heard or appreciated. It looks more like the leadership is strong-arming and patronizing its members rather than the members speaking as one voice behind its leadership.
I’m also concerned that teachers haven’t been as informed about how school board discussions and state actions arrived to the point of making these cuts. I have had conversations with teacher friends who seem unaware of some fundamental budget issues this year like state deferrals, mid-year cuts, and the fact that the school board entertained the option of a 5.5% cut as early as mid-February, even if they didn’t officially present it to DTA until April 20. These lapses in information communication are also evident in some of the teacher comments made during recent school board meetings.
I am not entrenched in any outcome. I do not work for DJUSD. This is something they need to work out for themselves in consultation with the membership and negotiations with the district. They may come to the same conclusion as you or they may not.
What I have been trying to tell you and you seem really stubborn about it is its not your place to tell them what they should do. It is at the very least insensitive. If they asked you specifically or the community generally it would be different but they have not. If you wanted to tell the Trustees, your representatives, what outcome they should pursue it would be different. But you did not do that you spoke to the teachers or their union and it doesn’t feel right. Its sort of like when you represent someone in a case and the other side asks for advise. There is only one correct answer. It goes something like I can only represent my client you need to seek your own council. The teachers need to seek their own council so offering up advise to them is the equivalent of a social bar violation.
To Mr. Toad: So I am not permitted, according to you, to give my opinion on this particular subject? Really? Where did freedom of speech go?
Sure you can you can even state your preferred outcome but if you tell the teachers what they should do it looks insensitive or arrogant.