The Burlington School Board meeting on Tuesday began with an announcement about how to evacuate the building. And no wonder: Students, parents and teachers flooded the meeting to caution the board against budget cuts — in particular, those that would eliminate teachers.
In reference to the high school cafeteria’s fire code restrictions, one school official joked, “If anyone asks, we have under 500 people. We aren’t counting.”
The rest of the night, however, entailed a lot of counting. A long procession of teachers — several on the verge of tears — came before the school board, each emptying the contents of a plastic bag on the table next to them. These were the teachers, generally in their first or second year, whose jobs are in jeopardy; their names have landed on the “reduction in force” (RIF) list, which identifies 48 positions that could be cut. The teachers had brought wooden blocks — one for each child they teach — to demonstrate how many youngsters would be impacted by their absence.
“Cutting even one of these teachers will be damaging,” said Megan Fitzpatrick, a second grade teacher at the J.J. Flynn Elementary School. “Cutting dozens will be devastating.”
The board hasn’t made any decisions about staffing cuts yet, and it doesn’t plan to until after six new board members take their seats next week. In addition to the RIF list, Superintendent Jeanne Collins has supplied members with a number of suggestions for scaling back programs to save money after voters on Town Meeting Day rejected a $67 million budget that would have raised taxes by nearly 10 percent.
Among the potential reductions is a proposal to reduce kindergarten classes from full days to half days. “The day is barely long enough now,” Suzy Tenenbaum, who teaches kindergarten at Flynn, told the board.
Collins put forward three options for reducing the proposed Fiscal Year 2015 budget. The first, which she’s endorsed, would cut $857,000 from the budget voters rejected in March. The other two would reduce it by $1,501,000 and $4,124,000, respectively. These options are outlined in the school board agenda here.
Some people asked the board to hold off on cuts entirely, and put the same budget that was struck down before voters a second time. On Town Meeting Day, 4,118 Burlington residents voted against the $67 million budget , while 3,424 voted for it. That ratio was not reflected in the turnout on Tuesday; only a handful of people spoke out in favor of budget reductions.
Dave Maher urged the school board not to overlook that vote tally. “The thing the school board needs to keep in mind is that for every four people here who support going back to the voters with the same budget that was rejected, there’s five, 10, 15 out there who are going to vote against it.” Putting an identical budget forth, Meyer said, “would be an insult.
For the most part, teachers at Monday’s meeting kept their remarks brief, allowing students and parents to make the case for preserving their jobs.
Burlington High School students, some with printed-out speeches, others reading from their smartphones, urged board members to take their teachers’ positions off the chopping block. Anthony Miles, a senior at BHS, said his history teacher, Jessica Little-Hayes, “had an incredible impact on me. She was able to connect with me on a personal level, which rarely happens.” Miles said he also credits her letter of reference with helping him get into his top choice of colleges.
Elementary school students also turned out. Some of them sprawled out on the floor, coloring signs with their school’s name. One read, “Let kids get good education.”
The Integrated Arts Academy (IAA), one of the city’s two magnet schools, had an especially large presence at the board meeting. The magnet school coordinator, the IAA “arts coach,” and a handful of other teacher positions are on the RIF list.
School community members have also been circulating an open letter to the city council, the school board, the superintendent, Gov. Peter Shumlin and Mayor Miro Weinberger. “The simple truth,” it states, “is that these cuts will nearly destroy the Herculean efforts of many, the tax-based investments made by Burlington residents over the last 5 years, and a commitment made via due process by the Burlington community to create, fortify and support the success of two magnet schools.”
The meeting Tuesday also served as a call to arms for those who want the school board to bring a budget back to voters instead of defaulting to the current year’s spending plan (which would still carry an 8 percent tax hike). Christopher Hood, a member of the Burlington Friends of Education, which advocates for passing the school budget each year, said the group will be doubling down on its efforts this time around. Other parents volunteered to stand outside grocery stores with flyers, or go door-to-door to convince neighbors to vote yes on the budget.
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My heart is breaking for the children and teachers who may be affected by the RIF cuts but it appears that the city residents can no longer swallow 10% increases. Is anyone aware of where the six new board members taking seats next week stand on RIF versus alternatives?
But here is the thing. If the budget were level funded with last year, there would still be an 8 percent tax hike, which is outside of the school’s control. Reduced federal and state funding is a primary culprit. I appreciate that people want to keep their taxes down, but at the same time, can we put the blame where it belongs? If we want to have the school system we’ve committed to, more of it has to be supported from private dollars.
The difference between 8% and 10% increase on a house valued at $300k is $92. Now it will be less because the 10% increase was rejected, but in my humble opinion, $92 was absolutely a bargain for keeping all of these valuable teachers in our schools.
In the reporting between Seven Days, BFP, and VPR not a single teacher came forward and said that they would consider a pay-reduction or benefit contribution increase in order to support keeping their colleagues employed. All they seemed to say is put the same budget forward and we will make sure that we get the “yes” votes back out a second time and make it pass over all the “no” votes that turned out on Town Meeting Day.
I am guessing the board comes back with the same outrageous increase they presented on town meeting day, because it comes down the avenue of least resistance. If voted down reverts back to fy2014 outrageous budget which experts predict will still raise property taxes for fy 2015, plus board has to make fewer staff reductions than they would if they presented a sensible, well managed budget that would cut programs where needed and staff where needed, thus actually making it apparent they were doing their job in a responsible manner. Be sure the timing of the next vote will be so when it takes place their will be no time for another vote thus reverting to fy 2014 for the fy 2015 budget. Manipulation of the voters seems to be the school boards biggest goal, not controlling costs and proper management.
Remember that the last budget that was shot down on March 4 was a 3.1% increase in the Burlington school budget (per-equalized pupil spending). 6.9% of the proposed 9.9% tax increase was added by the state under Act 68, not by your local Burlington school board.
This taxpayer thinks paying Burlington teachers an average of almost $70,000/year for six months of work is morally indefensible when the average salary of taxpayers is much lower. It doesn’t help to have teachers parading forward with bags of blocks begging for their jobs. I don’t hear any teachers offering to take small salary or benefit cuts ‘for the good of the children’. The teachers union should not underestimate the anger of voters, the audience at this meeting was heavily stacked by those who want taxpayers to empty their wallets at any cost. You can call for another vote, but those of us who think the teacher’s union and the school district need to tighten their belts will also come out in larger numbers. The teachers union needs to learn there is a limit. Burlington teachers are very generously remunerated for all the hard work they do to educate our children, it simply is wrong to have those who earn so much less struggle to pay higher and higher teacher benefits and salaries.
And don’t forget – this bulls**t is going to happen next year, and the year after that, and the year after that……without any reduction in pay or benefits to these poor, overworked teachers (I’m glad they had their meeting this week, because many will surely be out of town for their next week-long paid vacation).
There is no question that the teachers union used their machine to pack the room for this debate. What’s tragic is that it does not present the two sides equally. Burlington voters reject the school budget. The issue is that the school board has not been very careful in their budgeting process over the last few years, and voters are now realizing they can’t (or won’t) support continually increasing budgets. If it takes rejecting these latest proposals, or the loss of teaching positions, for the board to get the message, that’s painful but necessary.
I work for the State. When times were tough for the State a few years back, each and every state employee who made more than $50K took a pay cut, and ultimately, all the rest of us did too. The State didn’t pay COLAs and increased our co-pay for insurance. I’m shocked and disappointed that the teachers somehow think they’re immune from the same types of cuts when times are tough.
Those saying that teachers only work six months of the year, or that they don’t work full weeks because the school day is 8-3 need to get their facts straight. They spend a lot of the summer break doing continuing ed (at their own expense) to keep up with certification requirements, teaching summer school, etc. They take their work home at night and on weekends, when they grade papers, advising clubs, attending meetings. Let’s end the provocative rhetoric and start some productive conversations. And if you can only add misinformation to the debate, be quiet.
It doesn’t make sense to blame the state for the 8% tax rate, which as I understand it was due to Burlington under-assessing the value of its properties. In essence, for several years, Burlington got a “free ride.” The state publishes metrics of how accurate they believe local assessments are. Anyone involved with the school budget process should have seen this coming and prepared for it. High administrative costs and ever increasing benefit costs (tied to health care cost increases) are in part to blame, followed by years of Burlington voters passing ever increasing budgets without much question.