This is the draft of a piece I've been working through to articulate some of the ideas I've been thinking about regarding teachers unions and administration.
I try to instill the power of words in my students every single day. Whether we’re reading and discussing a character’s motivations and what we can learn from them or working to articulate our own ideas, the gift of communication and what it can do for human beings is front and center in our classroom.
As a young teacher, I’ve been in this business for only five years, and in each of those years the politics prevalent in public education overwhelm, invigorate, and flabbergast me. I can’t get too close to these politics, because they make me feel sick and they take away from my work in the classroom. I’m also drawn to the politics because so much of it impacts my daily work with children. At any rate, the more I learn, the less I understand about why teacher’s unions and the administrative side can’t better communicate.
We are in bad budget times as I write this, which certainly heightens the tension. Our district is looking to cover about $500,000 they are short to fully fund next year’s budget (they have about $4,000,000 in cash reserves, but that’s a topic to delve more deeply into at another time). The good news is that there are few teacher reductions. Unfortunately, cuts have been handed off to others: associates for general education classrooms and school nurses. Our district is looking at outsourcing our school nurses to public health to save $60,000-$70,000 a year. That’s the salary and benefits of one long-term teacher. In the long run, this doesn’t seem worth it.
What makes less sense is that if our union and our administration can’t agree on a settlement by Wednesday, the bargaining will go to arbitration. I don’t really understand what that means, but I know that lawyers get involved, and according to our chief negotiator, it will cost the district $60,000-$80,000 a year.
Um, what?? Common sense tells me that if the two sides don’t go to arbitration, we could save our nurses. Our chief negotiator said that if the district will give us 4%, this won’t be necessary. I said, “What if you go to 3%?”
He said, “I won’t.” This, to me, also doesn’t make sense.
Ever since I was a kid, I have been able to see the gray in nearly everything. I can never make a decision because I can see too many sides and too many perspectives. I feel that way now. I see Sam’s point of view that if the union settles too low, we’ll lose the ability to attract quality teachers to our area. If we drop all family insurance coverage for our teachers who are the single earners in their family, we’ll lose good people too. There’s a union mentality that if you give a little one year, you’ll never get it back and you’ll always settle for less. I also wonder what the district would be able to do, and what they would do, if we settled a little lower. Would we save nurses? Would we buy more computers for our kids? Or would administrators earn big raises? The trust is so broken between teachers unions and administrators that no one knows and no one will believe the other side is acting in the best interest of the students.
Because I’m young and naïve and the teacher in me has always wanted to see the best in people, I believe both sides are acting in what they believe is in the best interest of the students. I have to believe this, because I can’t physically work in an environment where I believe the leadership is greedy and manipulative.
Teachers unions are getting a lot of bad press these days, and some of it is deserved. Some of it isn’t. I’d really like to write about the complexities of all this in a way that brings folks together and helps them understand the other side’s point of view.
Sam wants to step down as chief negotiator after this year, and I thought maybe I would be a good negotiator—I can see all the sides of problems. That’s what ACTUAL negotiation is. But I would be terrible in that role—I’d give in to a pay cut assuming my kids would have a consistent nurse in the building, my members would be pissed, the administration would spend the money on something else because you can’t actually bargain to save jobs, and kids would end up worse off because their teachers wouldn’t feel valued. Epic fail as chief negotiator would be my legacy. That’s the little scenario that plays out in my mind.
So, how can I negotiate? How can I contribute? With the power of words that I teach every day. I’m throwing this piece (it’s rough, I haven’t fully developed ideas or thoroughly revised) to the small world of people I care about on my blog because I want to make it a public goal that I write about this. I have these ideas floating around for chapters in a book, how I can make it fit together, what research I need to do, and while I’m not sure what the timeframe will be or what roadblocks there might be, I need to articulate this goal and share these ideas while they’re so fresh and I’m so fired up.
I would appreciate any feedback or points of interest or questions you have that would fuel the fire.
0 comments:
Post a Comment