January 8,
2010
MEMBER
EDITORIAL
School
Board uses CBAs as an excuse |
On Monday January 4th, I watched the Goffstown School
Board talk about the recent reductions to the school
budget by the Budget Committee. The focus of the
discussion were two reductions to SAU lines. One
was a reduction of $129,000 for "SAU Management
Services" and the other was $300,000 from the
"School Administrative Services" budget.
That's a total of $429,000 from their asking price of
over $36 million.
What did they do? Not only did they complain, they
said it couldn't be done because of contractual
obligations!
I know the voters approved the Collective Bargaining
Agreements (CBAs) we're now stuck with a few years
ago. But times were good back then. They
aren't anymore.
And what's worse is that chairman Keith Allard said the
reductions couldn't be met because of those CBAs, so the
reductions would have to come by laying off teachers,
eliminating fields trips, yada, yada, yada.
Well I say hogwash! There's a very easy way to cut
that money from the top-heavy SAU administration budgets
and still meet the contractual obligations of the CBA.
And that is simply to reduce the SAU staff.
How many assistant bookkeepers do they need? How
many assistant secretaries and accounting clerks do they
need? Did you know that in addition to
superintendent Stacy Buckley's six-figure salary (which
doesn't include benefits), we're also paying for two
assistant superintendents? Those two positions
alone, with salary and generous benefits, are costing us
over $200,000 !
But instead of cutting administration costs by reducing
staff, Allard and the rest of the school board would
rather lay of teachers!
Looks to me like the concerns the school board
supposedly has for our children again takes a back seat
to keeping their own puffed-up administration in place.
Here's another idea. Instead of using these CBAs
as an excuse to keep spending and spending, maybe we
should all take note of what Ronald Reagan did with the
air traffic controllers. When the union refused to
budge, he fired them all then rehired those who wanted
to come back as non-union employees. We could do
the same, only I wouldn't rehire our school
administrative people - instead, I'd replace them.
There are a few of these school board members coming up
for re-election in March. It's time to clean house and
get a fresh bunch of folks on that board who understand
that Goffstown cannot afford their business as usual
budgets.
|
