By BILL BURNETT
Voters should reject all school district Maintenance and Operations levy proposals until we first eliminate locally funded “bonus” pay to school district administrators and teachers ($1.9 million via 19 supplemental pay to the teachers alone).
We should, minimally, eliminate 14 of the 19 days from the teachers’ local supplemental contract, the so-called TRI-Days, and use those existing $1.4 million in K-12 education resources to pay for more tangible items such as textbooks, transportation, technology, building maintenance, capital projects, utilities, a restored 30-minute longer middle school day, or even an actual 180-day student-in-attendance school year with all full-schedule days!
OHSD claims that “over the past five years, the district has been making sizable cuts.” In reality, from the 2006-2007 school year to this one, General Fund revenues increased 9 percent, from $44.7 to $48.9 million. Within that fund, Federal Impact Aid remains at $4.9 million and local M&O levy property taxes have skyrocketed from $1.9 to $3.3 million: 74 percent higher! Not really a “cut” at all, but, locally, the OHSD has apparently “cut” into almost everything except TRI-Days and administrator pay-padding! Enrollment has decreased by 80 FTE in that time, too.
Superintendent Rick Schulte claims the OHSD “doesn’t use any local levy money” for TRI-Days. He suggests that “the funding comes from federal Impact Aid” only.
In reality, both M&O local levy dollars and/or Federal Impact Aid can be used for just about anything on OHSD’s M&O levy “wish list,” but, instead, the school board has perennially optionally gifted about $2 million to certificated staff and administrators simply to pad their salaries!
The teachers’ union now wants five and one-half more TRI-Days and the teachers’ union website cynically asks: “Are Oak Harbor students worth at least an average level of levy support? If so, how can we help to replace the 2009 74 cents/$1000 levy with a $2.50/$1000 levy request in February 2013”?
Large tracts of federal land in the OHSD make each levy and bond more expensive for local property owners. Federal Impact Aid offsets those costs and so functions as a local levy equivalent, so we already have the equivalent of a $2.50 levy in the OHSD.
TRI Pay’s broken logic is: “We don’t have enough dollars to pay for anything else, but we will always have enough money for TRI-Days,” yet school district administrators, the teachers’ union and the elected school board are all in cahoots with one another in this perennial pay-padding stratagem. They will have no incentive to change spending priorities until the voters force their hand. Please reject all proposed school district levy proposals until all dollars for TRI-Days are instead all being used for actual school days. Please do this for the kids.
William Burnett
Oak Harbor
