What About That “Elephant in the Room?”

[originally created and distributed to E-mail networks on 5/21/07, but still relevant]

In its May 13th edition, on page A46, Newsday published a full page editorial on the important topic of the costs of running school districts on Long Island, and its resultant impact upon property taxes.

One of the things that the editorial highlighted was our need to address the reality - versus the practice of obscurity that seems to be preferred by most district superintendents and most boards of education - of the cost of salaries and benefits, primarily for teachers and secondarily for administrators and other staff.

The Newsday editorial's most important paragraphs on this point were the following:

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"Teachers' pets

But the biggest chunk of any school's budget is the salaries and benefits paid to teachers, administrators and other staff. And that's where school boards have fallen short. Even when a district announces a contract agreement that holds raises to the level of the inflation-induced cost-of-living increase, the reality is that district employees - especially teachers - will receive double that.

What's often not understood by taxpayers is the impact of automatic "step increases" for longevity or academic credits earned. Even if a district won a "zero" - no annual increase - the payroll could rise by several percentage points. And benefits, particularly health care, by even more."

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Newsday has basically validated the analysis that I first did last December, after three of the five members of our Board of Education, following the recommendation of our Superintendent, voted to approve the Memorandum of Agreement for a new contract with the teachers union, fully six and one half months before the existing contract was even due to expire.

Anyone at the December 14th BOE meeting heard that agreement described as basically a “3% raise, plus Step,” and my December 20th community commentary pointed out the lack of candor in any such description.

I went on to provide an analysis using the existing contract and demonstrated how, at one particular Column level of 4 (corresponding to a Masters Degree of one hypothetical teacher), and at Step 5, such a teacher would actually receive 4.15% more just for being in place one additional year, i.e. Step 6, without any increase in the contract which had just been agreed by the BOE.

That does not mean that all Step/Column increases would be so generous, since the Step increases vary significantly among the Columns, and even among the particular Steps. But it did demonstrate that if an administrator or a trustee was merely speaking of 3% increases to the contract, i.e. by the new Memorandum of Agreement, he/she was not really speaking about true annual costs to the District and its taxpayers.

In April, Northport's local newspaper, The Observer, published my letter to the editor which noted, among other things, the following:
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“…we have to watch out for administrators or trustees, of any school districts, who refer to contract settlements that provide for a hypothetical increase of, say, 3% per annum, when the reality is that employees are actually receiving salary increases of more like 5% to 6% per annum.

How is that possible?

Most teachers' union contracts have automatic salary escalators that
provide an increase to an employee merely by being in the same job for one more year. There is no performance review for the employee, and whether someone is a superior teacher, or average, or deficient, all employees at that particular level (in Elwood's contract these are called “Steps”) would receive the same increase, aside from any increases negotiated for a new contract.

Wouldn't we all like to have that?

There are also increases built into most contracts that are provided when a teacher accumulates a certain number of additional postgraduate credits, or an additional degree. In private industry, or in the military, these do not result in another automatic salary increase, although they could be a factor in one's performance review.

So, when any BOE or Superintendent speaks only about an increase of 3% or 3.25%, they may be technically correct (i.e., more honest than Bush's “weapons of mass destruction,” or Clinton's “depends upon what the definition of 'is' is” ), but they are not being candid with their residents about the true compensation packages which are awarded to teachers.”
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In any event, the days of ignoring the “Elephant in the Room,” the cost of teachers' contracts, which have been accelerating faster than in private industry (or even in our overstretched military, for that matter), are over.

Even Newsday has finally acknowledged that this often unrecognized, and unbalanced, one-way economic street is not sustainable.

The next step should be a published candid analysis, by our District, and indeed by every district on Long Island, of the total cost - and total benefit to the teachers - of the compensation packages for teachers unions (including their salaries, plus their healthcare benefits, plus their pension benefits). We will then need a healthy dose of realism on the part of teachers unions, and their individual members, which must result in their willingness to accept their own fair share of the burden of escalating costs that has, until now, been primarily borne by the taxpayers, as well as by the students who sometime have to sacrifice courses, or clubs, or athletics, or arts programs, in their own schools.

Fairness, all around, is a very reasonable concept.

Jerry Hannon