About school union concessions
In the last few months, has anyone noticed how many area school boards were able to ask and convince their district employee’s unions to agree to concessions in an attempt to balance their school’s budgets?
Haslett Schools asked and received cooperation from their unions to help balance their budget.
Lansing School district did as well. So did Ovid-Elsie.
In Ovid-Elsie, MESSA (a subsidiary of the MEA teacher’s union) had been the teacher’s health insurance provider for decades. The school district was able to provide basically the same coverage through another provider, at a much lower cost. So they did. Even the teacher’s association president (and teacher) Doug Long, quoted in the Argus Press of June 27th, said “It was the best thing to do, it was obvious we were saving the school a ton of money.”
At the special informational meeting the St. Johns Board of Education held on June 6th, 2011 the public was told that the board had already made many cuts to the budget, yet the St. Johns School District still provides the very expensive MESSA plan for teachers. I hope that the next time the school board negotiates with the St. Johns Education Association and the other unions, it will get serious in their talks and address these and other overpriced plans. The board might consider actually demanding some concessions. The unions surely know how to make demands.
If concessions had been asked for and agreed to earlier this year from the unions, teacher layoffs might not have been necessary. It’s called reopening a contract. It could have saved the jobs of some of the newest, most ambitious teachers, and probably even allowed more money to go into the classroom. Were the unions ever asked? If so, what was their reply?
David J. Smith
St. Johns, MI 48879