Opinion
By Richard Lamken
01-24-2024
A now infamous lead line in the District’s marketing literature:
“Most of the $13.7 million raised each year will go toward teacher compensation.”
It proved to be $16.9 million in the first year of the referendum and the teachers will only receive about 35% of that revenue.
The district never intended for teachers to get most of the revenue, as demonstrated by the well circulated spreadsheet showing all District employee from custodians to cabinet members were getting $4,800. Yes, those cabinet members, who we were told were excluded from benefiting from the 1 Mill referendum.
This spreadsheet was in the hands of both unions, NESPA, who represents the Support Personnel, and NTA, who represents Teachers and other Instructional Personnel, well before their negotiations, a big mistake by the district, giving substantial leverage to both Unions.
NESPA was allowed to settle first, another mistake, and they gladly accepted their $4,800 compensation supplement. NTA, negotiated later and rejected the $4,800 across the board supplement and, instead, insisted on a graduated scale from $2K for 1-6 years, $4K for 7-12 years, (these 2 groups represent 62% of the teachers), and so on, up to $10K for the most senior teachers. Management caved and accepted NTA’s schedule. An effective, well-informed negotiator would have held firm on the[RL1] $4,800 per employee salary supplement that had already been agreed to with NESPA.
We have been told over and over again about the need to recruit and retain experienced teachers and yet, a 6-year teacher is only worth 41.7% of a first-year custodian and a 12-year teacher 83.3%. Giving a first-year custodian a 15% salary increase seems way more important than increasing a 6th year teacher’s salary, since their increase was only 4%!
How would the vote have gone if we knew up front how little 62% of the teachers would benefit when compared to the support personnel? How many would have supported the referendum if they knew how inept the district would prove to be in negotiating with their unions?
All this lies at the feet of Dr. Burns whose only response is to file with the Supervisor of Elections for another term. She is accountable for the deception of the voters in the marketing literature and how ineptly the district handled the lion’s share of the 1 Mill referendum revenue. It’s time for her to have to answer for these decisions!
If you don’t like what happened, get involved to be a part of the solution.https://www.counties.citizensdefendingfreedom.com/fl-nassau/become-a-volunteer/
Richard Lamken is a retired Assistant Superintendent of Schools. He volunteers in the Emergency Department of a local hospital and as a career/employment counselor for a local non-profit, assisting those looking for work and those looking for more meaningful employment.
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
