Opinion
By Rich Lamken, 12-9-24
Voters approved a referendum, which is raising and spending approximately $14 million in increased county taxes, “sold” to the public as more money for teachers. In reality, most of the money is being used for other purposes.
After being unable to find the School Board approved labor contracts on the District website, as an interested county resident, I was forced to request from Scott Hodges, NCSD Director of HR, the detail regarding the Nassau Educational Support Personnel Association (NESPA) and Nassau Teachers Association (NTA) contracts for the 2024-2025 school year. It wasn’t posted anywhere, even three weeks after being approved by the School Board. Mr. Hodges promptly responded to me. What I discovered was that a 12-month NESPA employee received (an additional? $7,589 while a 12-year teacher received $6,500 and an 18-year teacher received $8,000.
Was this your understanding when the District told you that ““Most of the $13.7 million raised each year will go toward teacher compensation”? Did you expect that any non-teacher would get over a $1,000 more than a 12-year teacher? Almost the same amount as an 18-year teacher?
We hear, repeatedly, from all the School District administrators that the additional employee compensation millage $ are “subject to bargaining.” What other public entity that has over $10 million to distribute to its employees and, then, pretends that it has no leverage? In negotiations, there are always non-negotiables. One of those is the district has an obligation to be true to its commitment to the taxpayers to compensate teachers substantially more than non-teachers. No custodian, food & nutrition worker or secretary should get more millage $ than ANY teachers. There’s no way that we ever believed that the starting point of millage $ distribution was that every employee group get the same $ per employee. If NESPA negotiates a distribution on a per day worked basis, that is on them. The teachers chose to distribute it based on longevity, again, fine. Not enough $ went to the teachers, aka NTA, which means too many $ went to non-instructional or NESPA. Seventy to Seventy-Five percent of the 10+million Millage employee compensation $ should have gone to NTA, the teachers, and the balance or 25-30% should have gone to NESPA and the non-represented.
Please don’t listen to non-instructional leadership who tells anyone who will listen how bus drivers, custodians and food & nutrition workers are often the only ones able to reach some students. If we are relying on these individuals to be vitally essential to the education of some students, then we need to look at site and district supervision and find out how badly we are failing students and how many!
For the second year in a row, we have been deceived, big time. The district continues to break its word and fails to live up to its promise to the voters that teachers would reap the biggest benefit from the millage $ provided by the taxpayers. Furthermore, the district has prevented the citizen chosen to represent the voters on the Citizens Oversight Committee in the employee compensation area from having any influence under the guise of it being “subject to bargaining.” All they did was inform the citizen of the results of bargaining, essentially eliminating any citizen oversight.
Do any of the NTA leaders have a spine? They should demand the lion’s share of the millage $. They should be as offended as I am that their members are getting the short end of the stick, especially based on how the district sold the millage resolution. They should demand a higher percentage of the employee compensation millage $. For some crazy reason, NESPA also gets to “go first,” with their contract negotiations. They negotiate and settle before NTA finalizes their contract. This is the reverse of my experience as a lead management negotiator in the K-12 arena for many years. We always finished our negotiations with our Instructional Union before we finished with our non-Instructional Union. Often, non-Instructional had a “me-too” clause, agreed upon, at their request, that had them accept what we negotiated with Instructional in Salary and Benefits.
Year # 2 in the distribution of millage revenue and the district has continued the lie and made it even worse. Last year, the disproportionality affected all teachers with 12 years or less of experience. This year, it’s expanded to those 18 years and under. If you’re frustrated like me with the district’s actions, contact your school board members and tell them to stop lying to the public. Tell them that all teachers need to receive more $ than ANY non-instructional employee. If you don’t speak out, you’ve no reason to complain when this inequity continues and, perhaps, gets worse.
Rich Lamken and his wife, Meg are both retired and live in Fernandina Beach. They are both retired Assistant Superintendents of Schools with decades of experience in K-12 Education. Rich has been extremely active with the Education Division of Nassau Citizens Defending Freedom and volunteers in both the Empowerment Program at Barnabas and the ER at Baptist Medical Center, Nassau. He has observed, commented on, advocated and written extensively on this referendum and other educational matters.
