By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… The contract talks between the Clark County School District and the teachers union have gone to arbitration. Both sides will have to abide by what the arbitrator decides.

If you use the starting salary listed in the 2011-2012 budget, the beginning teacher’s salary dropped $395 from last year. The beginning teacher now makes $25.14 an hour, down from $25.47 an hour from the 2010-2011 school year.

That figure is based on the seven and one-half hour day for which the teacher is contracted. It is also based on a total of 184 teaching days. A teacher who has worked for the district 14 years and acquired a master’s degree plus 32 additional hours gave up $747 dollars a year and now makes $47.91 an hour down from $48.40.

The maximum step on the teacher’s salary schedule, the Advanced Studies Certificate, requires a teacher to have more hours than a Doctorate to qualify for top pay of $50.52 down from $50.76 per hour. These teachers gave up $333 dollars a year.

To say the teachers have refused to make concessions is incorrect. If a teacher so desires, he can earn a Doctorate costing between 25 and 100 thousand dollars, depending on the school, to make an additional $1500 a year or $1.08 an hour.

A teacher receives no overtime, no paid holidays, and no paid vacation days. Teachers are laid off over Christmas, Easter, and the three months of summer. Sometime even teachers lose sight of this fact.

While people mistakenly believe teachers are paid for the summer months when they are not in school, this is not the case. Teacher’s pay is pro-rated and the district pays them part of the money they earned during the school year over the summer.

This is financially beneficial to the district. The interest earned by holding the money goes into the general fund to be used as the District sees fit.

Teacher work conditions are much more closely related to that of migrant workers than to professionals such as doctors and lawyers. There are private companies that employ seasonal laborers and when those laborers are laid off, they supplement their salaries with unemployment benefits. This is not the case with public school teachers who are not eligible for unemployment benefits.

One of the greatest bargains in public service is the school teacher.

While the issue of teacher salaries is before the arbitrator, the District has put on a media blitz alleging they will fire 1000 teachers if the arbitrator finds in favor of the teachers. Without a doubt, the District is hoping to influence the decision of the arbitrator.

If the arbitrator finds in favor of the teachers, the District will have to reallocate over $35 million dollars. While this may infringe on some of the District’s pet projects, I would suggest there are places in the budget that the money can be found without destroying the education of the students of Clark County.

The District settled a labor dispute with the school police that resulted in raises and longevity pay for the cops. The District’s settlement with the support personnel included step increases. The District just added another first year attorney to their staff of nine for over $130,000 plus benefits. The District is willing to pay a labor consultant more than $300 an hour to give advice on how to further cut the pay of employees making $25 an hour and who have already willingly taken a pay cut.

It is time for some leadership in the Clark County School District. Someone needs to champion the cause of the most important element in the educational process of the School District, the classroom teacher.

Every good farmer knows you don’t eat your seed corn. The District is in the process of eating its seed corn as it continues to devalue the classroom teacher. Board members continue to mouth their support of the classroom teacher. It is amazing how important they say they believe the classroom teacher is until contract time. I would say to the Board that it is time to step in, take charge, and put our money where your mouth is.

No one asked me but… In October 2008, I wrote:

“About two months ago I noticed that the talking heads on TV began to center their conversation on the economy. At the time, the housing market and gas prices were the only real economic issues that had any substance. The economy was still growing, albeit, at a rate slower than in the past.”

Over the last three years I have stated to anyone who cared to listen that we were going to talk ourselves into a depression. Ever since we left the gold standard, the American economy has been a faith-based economy and when Americans lose their faith, the economy takes a beating.

Needing an issue during the 2008 Presidential election, the Democrats told the American people that the economy had tanked. They continually told the American people the Bush administration had driven the economy into the ditch.

Unfortunately the American people believed them and lost their faith. Ironically, the major economic problem was in the housing market brought on by unsustainable loans forced on Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae by Democrat legislators like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

As the manufactured crisis was used to repudiate the Bush Republicans, the country slipped deeper and deeper into recession. This was done basically through a media blitz convincing the American people how bad off they were. Unfortunately, it worked too well.

As we head for the election of 2012, the same people who sold us on the recession are now trying to sell us on the recovery. They are now using the same information that was available in 2008, but are now putting a positive spin on it.

I hope they are as successful in convincing us of the recovery as they were in the fall.

Thought of the week…If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn’t want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher’s job.

– Donald D. Quinn

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