Students will celebrate the end of school two days before expected this year as Miami Dade County Public Schools tries to balance its miscalculated budget by deferring two days payment from teachers.
“So the custodians agreed to it, the bus drivers agreed to it, the techs agreed to it, the administrators agreed to it, but the teachers union did not agree to it- until recently,” says Sidener.
On Friday May 15th teachers voted 15,504 to 3,980 in favor of the district’s decision to cut teacher pay, with the guarantee that it will be paid back in the fall of the 2009-2010 school year. “This way the school district will avoid laying off teachers while ultimately balancing the budget,” explains Sidener. “Essentially you’re getting paid time off, but you’re deferring the payment until next year.”
On Monday, May 18th Superintendant Alberto Carvalho reported to the school board that there will not be a need to fire any teachers with the new budget plan.
While the district would step in to avoid ending the year in debt despite UTD opposition, a “no” vote would express the discontent with the MDCPS decision and reject any benefits purposed by the district.
As part of their three year contract, teachers have been promised pay raises since 2006. In March of 2009, the district insisted that there was not enough money in the budget and continued to freeze all pay raises for district employees.
With school board promising to return the money, some teachers are skeptic. “————-”
“I trust the superintendent,” says Sidener. “I think he understands that he has asked his employees to put themselves on the line and that his credibility and his ability to do the job will be completely undermined if he doesn’t come through.”
The United Teachers of Dade County voted 90% in favor of the MDCPS’s decision
This way the school district will avoid laying off teachers while ultimately balancing the budget.
MIAMI HERALD
The teachers are the last employee group to sign off on the measure, which will save the cash-strapped school system $27 million.
Albert Carvalho told the school board at a meeting on Monday, May 18th that there won’t be a need to fire teachers
The district will also save $25.6 million by making principals 10-month employees rather than 12-month employees.
15,504 voted for it, while 3,980 voted against it
DR.SIDENER QUOTE
The district has been in a very tenuous financial position- all districts in the state of Florida have been, but our district is more so than others for a number of reasons. First of all, Dade is just more expensive. Things cost more here. Secondly, our previous administration at the district level brought in a whole lot of people at the higher level of administration, like in the budget office that really didn’t have experience in the county schools, and they didn’t quite understand how things work, so there were some fatal flaws. The salary calculations were off. I think that is was off almost a million dollars a payroll, so the projected budget was already off $20 million for the future.
Inherited technical deficiencies in the budget process resulted in $202 million budget and reduction appropriations between July 1st and September 2008. The fragile fiscal condition was compounded by a worsening national and state economy resulting in the exorbitant funding reductions from Tallahassee forced the district to make drastic cuts required an additional $123 million reduction in November. In January, the special legislative session resulted in the need to cut an additional$ 55 million from the budget.
So add it up, 202, plus 123, plus 55 is a lot of money. That’s $380 million. And the whole budget is a 3 billion dollar operating budget and you’re talking about cutting $400 million of it.
The state constitution requires that the district not go in the red. They have to end the year, by June 30th, in the black. So the plan that they came up with was to ask employees to defer some of their pay till next year. So the plan was- depending if you were a 12 month.employee, it was three days, if you’re a 10 month employee it’s two days- so basically what was agreed to by all of the unions except the teacher union, was to take
So let’s say I make a hundred dollars a day. So you’re going to take $300 of my pay and you’re going to wait and give it to me in October, instead of me getting it now. And they took that $300 and put it over five payrolls and $60 come out of each paycheck and you get it back. And they gave you the recess days, so you could take the days off so you could work. So
So the custodians agreed to it, the bus drivers agreed to it, the techs agreed to it, the administrators agreed to it, but the teachers union did not agree to it- until recently.
They did a straw vote which isn’t binding, but when it came down to the actual MOU (memorandum of understanding) went into effect, it went to a real vote. It was a vote on the binding contract.
Either way, they were going to end school early. No matter what, they had to have the money. But the difference is whether you were going to give your pay willingly and get it back in October or whether you were going to say “no” and they take it and you don’t get it back. When it finally came to that-when they were told ‘well it’s going to happen anyway. You can either vote yes and get the pay back or vote no and not get the pay back.’ So they voted yes.
They’re very upset about it. I think there’s a feeling that the Union didn’t do the right thing by them, they never really gave them the information from the beginning. I think that had they known it was going to happen anyway, they would have been more willing. I think there’s a distrust of the district whether or not they’re really going to give the money back, that maybe they’ll never see it again. Basically-everyone was supposed to get a raise but Alessia, who’s getting a raise right now? In the world? That’s just not happening.
I do [think Dade will follow through with their promises]. I trust the superintendent. I think he understands that he has asked his employees to put themselves on the line and that he understands that his credibility and his ability to do the job will be completely undermined if he doesn’t come through. I think he’s smart enough to do that. He always talks about the human side. If you’re going to balance the budget, you’re either going to fire people- lay people off- or somehow you gotta get the money. In a school district money is spent on staff. It’s a people profession. It’s people intensive- that’s where our money is.
It’s a constitutional law- all districts must balance their budgets.
And then the Unions position was’ find it somewhere else’ but the district kept coming back with ‘we’ve cut, we’ve cut, we’ve cut and the only thing we can do now is cut jobs.’ And we’re trying not to cut jobs.
