WISD Forums
The WISD millage proponents are hosting several public forums. The Locations and Times are posted below. If you have additional information on available forums please let us know at washtenawcountytaxpayers@yahoo.com
Chelsea:
Thursday, October 15 at 7pm WSEC 500 Washington St. Chelsea MI Board Room
Tuesday, October 20 at 7pm WESC 500 Washington St. Chelsea MI Rm. 100
Manchester:
Tuesday, October 13 at 7pm 410 City Rd. Manchester MI Board of Ed. Meeting Rm.
Ann Arbor
Thursday, October 15 at 7pm Huron High Theater
Monday, October 19 at 7pm Pioneer High School Little Theater
Ypsilanti
Thursday, October 22 at 7pm Ypsilanti Senior Center 1015 N Congress St Ypsilanti, MI
Please let us know of any additional forums that are scheduled in any area.
It is important that we get there and ask why the supers are demanding more of our hard earned money before they have done everything they can to cut costs.
The primary area of large savings are as follows, given that about 85% of a school district’s costs are salary and benefits:
1. Privatization of support services, namely Food Service (which quite a few districts have done), Transportation (which some districts throughout the state, such as Tecumseh, have done, but not many) and Custodial (which none of the 10 districts affected have done). At Adrian, the savings I calculated, after receiving a quote from a reputable company, was about $800,000 per year for a school district with 4000 students. The savings comes from a much lower wage, very much lower health care insurance costs, little (if any) retirement plan costs, and a vast reduction from the ridiculous number of vacation days the Adrian custodians were entitled to by the union contract.
About 2001, I had analyzed the Transportation (bus drivers) department and concluded then that little would be saved. In the current job market which is quite different from 2001, the results of the analysis might be entirely different. (In fact, Adrian has since privatized their Transportation Department.)
A question can be asked, “How many of the 10 districts have privatized the Food Service Program? The Transportation department? The custodians?
A follow-up question could be, “Would you be willing to put the three services out to bid by a private company and post on the Internet a comparison of the quotes received with the total costs of the current program?”
2. A reduction in the wage and benefit levels of all employees. The wage levels for most school district employees are at levels higher than sustainable in the current economic environment. Many attack the central office or building administrators’ salaries are being too high. In some cases they are, but in most cases they are simply higher than the top teachers’ salary levels to account for the 12 month contracts (vs. 9.5 months), or the extra number of hours worked per week, or simply the additional responsibilities of the job. For superintendents, you must also factor in the “hazardous duty” pay, as most superintendents must start looking for their next job as soon as they are selected as superintendent because of the exposed position they are in, and the crazyiness of School Board politics, which often causes gaps in their work opportunities. In short, the beast must be attacked at the bottom, the teacher salaries and benefits.
Lowering the teacher salary and benefits can be done, with or without the agreement of the teachers’ union, by using the authorized tactic of “impasse”. This is tough bargaining indeed, but allowed by state law, and which I am aware of only one of the 560+ school districts in the state having done. The best area for rollbacks is probably the health insurance costs (despite improvement here by most districts in the past 4 years).
Note that I have been a Public School District Business Manager for 7+ years since May, 2000, so have some basis for these comments.