Is a strike on the horizon for Addison County teachers?

Teachers in the Addison Northeast school district have had the threat of a potential $4000 a year pay cut hanging over their heads for some time – a major hit to household income by any standard. After actions such as a November 18th informational picket and an unambiguous, continuing willingness to negotiate for a fair solution, The boards of the Supervisory Union tonight voted to walk away from negotiations entirely, opting instead to simply impose their conditions unilaterally.

From the Addison Northeast Teachers’ Union:

“The teachers don’t want the year disrupted, but the boards, by using the imposition weapon and walking away from negotiations, leaves the union with little choice,” (Mt. Abraham Union High School Advanced Placement calculus teacher Heather) Parkhurst said.

“It’s not too late for the boards to reconsider their vote today,” she said. “We urge them to return to the table.”

Seriously, when does this teachers-as-public-utilities (as opposed to valued community members with families and livelihoods serving a critical need) mentality peter out? Yes, times are financially tight, but that’s never an excuse for this kind of bad faith from the boards. If a strike becomes necessary simply to ensure this basic degree of fairness, what kind of a waste of everybody’s time is that?

Teachers will do what they have to do to protect their own families. It should go without saying that the boards should do the honorable thing and return to the bargaining table. Period.

7 thoughts on “Is a strike on the horizon for Addison County teachers?

  1. The Republican party says teachers are lazy money moochers that are overpaid parasites and contribute nothing good to society, and the Republicans are never wrong!

    Really now, teachers might earn up to $50,000 after 20 years of service and who on earth deserves such a huge, exorbitant salary like that – other than bank CEOs?

    The GOP says teachers should get paid $1/hour for life and that’s more than fair.  Who really believes teachers should be able to afford to buy groceries for their family, anyway?

    —–

    I was back at Mt. Abe back in the early 1980s and I remember out teachers then discussing a possible strike because they wanted teacher’s base pay to increase to $10,000 a year!  Middlebury had just raised their teacher’s base pay to $12K and Mt. Abe was at something like $8,500!

    As a teen I knew that $8,500 was obscenely low, and I was amazed at thow they were able to draw the great teachers that they had there at the time with such an insultingly low figure.

    So what happened in Addison County?  Have the TeaBirchers taken over the Supervisory Union?  How much does the Supervisory Union Manager make?  Up here in the OSSU where my kids now attend school the guy that left last year was making some insane amount like $128,000!!!

    How can the CEO who is making an obscene an unjustifiable amount of money turn around and complain that teacher’s salaries are too high, when even the highest paid teachers get less than half?

    If the Supervisory Union wants to save some money, fire their manager!

  2. If the imposed contract stands,

    the teachers contributions to health insurance will go from 10% to 15%.  The most someone could lose is $862 per year, for those at the top of their step, and who have a family health insurance plan.  

        Depending on a person’s salary range, they would get an average of a 2.5 percent raise for this year, with no automatic increase at the beginning of next year.  The boards hope this change will make teachers more likely to negotiate and finish contracts before the school year starts.   25 of the 187 teachers will receive no raise because they are at the top of their step.  I think that the teachers are fighting to get those 25 some sort of raise this year.  

        The boards also imposed 1 1/2 more hours of work time per month for meetings, mostly regarding collaboration.

    I got this information from going to the meeting, and reading the statement by the district on the ANESU web site. http://www.mtabe.k12.vt.us/ane

    Teachers add value to society like few other, if any professions.  I  live in the district, and wonder how the two following points can be worked out at the same time.  

    1.  ANESU needs to keep salaries and benefits competitive with other districts in order to retain and recruit excellent teachers.  

    2.  School boards everywhere are struggling with limited resources, and need to present budgets that are reasonable

    to voters.

    Many at the meeting Wednsday night called for the Board to adhere to more of the suggestions of the fact finder’s report.  

    Regarding health insurance recommendation, the fact finder sates:  “This pattern in Addison and Rutland Counties reflects a local priority to trade higher salary goals in

    exchange for keeping employee contributions to health insurance premiums at the current

    level. The large change proposed by the Board is also not justified by large premium

    increases; the VEHI Plan went up only 3% for 2010 – 2011.”

    Regarding salary increase:  “Looking at

    the wage settlements for 2010-11 as a whole, as the Board suggests, produces a pattern of

    recent settlements ranging widely from 0% to 4% TNM…Based on all of the combination of these recent comparables, a relatively stable

    cost of living, and the overall condition of education funding in the State as well as in the

    local communities, I recommend an increase of 2.5 % TNM. This is the approximate

    cost of a step-only settlement similar to the only recent one in Addison NW Supervisory

    Union. That settlement is certainly the single most closely comparable, since it is in the

    same county and was settled just a few months ago and also not accompanied by any

    change in the 90/10 health insurance premium split. The recommended settlement is

    worded as TNM in order to allow the parties flexibility to allocate between teachers still

    eligible for step increases and those whose long service has moved them off the grid.”  Allowing for all teachers to benefit from the wage increase.

    We’ll stay tuned to see how this situation develops.

  3. I’m not quite sure how Odum gets the $4000 cut figure if a teacher might lose, according to KB, $862 from insurance increases but get a 2.5% increase in salary, which on, say, a $40,000 a year salary would be $1000.  Even allowing that insurance will probably go up its own, besides the increased contribution percentage, I just don’t see how a $4000 cut is possible.  

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