The following is an email sent to members of the Middletown Education Association on Friday March 19, and obtained by MoreMonmouthMusings just moments ago:
To All MTEA members,
As you all are acutely aware, we a facing the fight of our professional lives right now. The devastating cuts that the governor has proposed will have chilling effects across our state and impact our school district to the tune of over 11 million dollars! This will mean layoffs, larger class sizes, and a possible loss of programs. The Board of Education and the Superintendent are in the process right now of developing a budget that will be presented to the County Superintendent on Monday.
We need to stand up to the bullying tactics that our governor is using to incite the public through the media. Governor Christie has said that he would be happy to sign bills that would violate collective bargaining. NJEA has said that we need to PROTECT our collective bargaining agreement! We must think of it as our bible in the workplace! Our collective bargaining agreement gives meaning and integrity to our workplace. Our contract is never reopened in boon economies to provide the benefit of an increase, and we should not be expected to reopen it now, when we bargained fairly for our settlement. On Thursday March 11th at Representative Council, a motion was made, seconded, and unanimously passed not to agree to or approve a salary freeze. The NJEA’s stand is also very clear on this critical issue, “We will not open our contracts or freeze our salaries”. Our principles are not for sale.
I welcome any and all suggestions that our members have in order to face this crisis and get the truth out to our community about the lies that the governor is telling. We need as many members as possible to attend the upcoming budget meeting on March 24th to get the word out to the community about how the looming layoffs will affect their children. We as a union must stay together and take action where we can.
This is what NJEA recommends that we can and should do in the next 72 hours:Call your Assemblymen
Visit their offices
Write letters if you haven’t done so yet
Get your family members and friends to write letters
Visit the NJEA website for talking points http://www.njea.org/page.aspx
On the NJEA website is a separate area called Keep the Promise where you will find the analysis of the bills, Q & A, and the truth about pension funding
Use the Legislative section on the NJEA website to Cyber Lobby and also watch the video about our pensions and pass it on to friends and family
We know that there are many questions and concerns that need to be addressed and are going to be holding a General Membership meeting on Tuesday, March 23rd at Jacques at 4:00, to discuss them. Our NJEA Uniserv Representative, Marc Abramson will be in attendance as well. Please make every effort to attend this very important meeting in order to be informed and united as we navigate these unprecedented changes.
We need to fight the schoolyard bully and not back down!
Sincerely,
Linda Guyer, President
Amy Johnson, 1st Vice President
Middletown taxpayers can counter these efforts by:
Call your Assemblymen
Visit their offices
Write letters if you haven’t done so yet
Get your family members and friends to write letters
And my visiting the NJEA website and burning up its bandwidth.
Also, feel free to make comments here. Your legislators read them.
Posts
15 comments:
Give me a friggin break. "Our collective bargaining agreement gives meaning and integrity to our workplace." Now I get it, all that "For Kids Sake" is all a bunch of BS. All along I thought teaching and nurturing young minds gave their "workplace" meaning. Art, there isn't one parent in this town who will back these selfish, greedy union drones. If they think the parents abandoned them when they hauled them off to jail a few years ago, just wait until you hear the sea of crickets this time around.
did I miss the usual threats of: no gym, no sports, no after-school fun, no college scholarships 'cause we won't help you??.. waa waa..poor them.. here we go!
hey, I've got a great idea. how about just teaching reading, writing and math. Throw a little science in there and we're all good.
Enough of the social engineering that just wastes money and leaves confused children.
Half the teachers, more learning and much less expensive.
I can't believe it!
More Monmouth Musings and Middle Mike in agreement!
MTEA, you had better start listening.
It might be slightly offtopic or taken the wrong way here, but I think some amount of credit is due to the NJEA/MTEA here. It has never failed to impress me on some level that despite what their views and policies do to taxpayers, parents, students or anyone other than the teachers themselves, this group is ALWAYS doing EXACTLY what they claim they will do, defend teachers, right or wrong, good or bad. The *EA union is always very vocal, very active, and very successful, at defending their members and their members seem to be always ready and able to do their part to keep their union strong . Not saying I agree with them or their positions and policies, but I can certainly respect the union and it's members on some level for doing what they claim they will do and not floundering and eventually letting it's members down. Honestly, the rest of us (conservative Republican) taxpayers should only hope that someone(s) defends us (conservative Republicans) the way that the unions defends their members and with the same level of passion and persistence. Christie is doing a fair job of this, hopefully the assembly and senate Republicans step up their efforts because I personally think they have been letting us (conservative Republicans) down for a long time now.
MTEA, the cost of educating a student per Middletown School District is approx. 12,800.00 per year. You continue to threaten the children's programs, cuts in classes, larger classrooms, taking away sports, etc the list of threats against the children is never ending. The normal YOUR kids will suffer! Threats, threats,threats.
Well move over for VOUCHERS then. At $12,800.00 I will take that voucher and go to RBC or CBA,that would cover their tuition. They offer a better education, smaller classrooms, and considered better schooling by most colleges. If they can do it, why can't you?
REASON:"the collective bargaining agreement".
WE the taxpayers & students Welcome more Charter Schools and Vouchers!
Eventually MTEA, you can close some schools once the Charters and Vocational schools come into play.
Just look how successful MAST is.
Get a grip MTEA & NJEA, the party is OVER, and stop threatening our children, start cutting Central Office admistration in MIddletown and you do not need 7 Vice Principals in each high school. Cut the waste, cut the waste to vendors. The school boards MUST
start looking out for the taxpayers and children not the Unions. The school boards normally have a self-interest agenda, whether it's for their own child, ( most get the programs geared toward their child)or they obtain a pension themselves,or a family member, from the system since they are retired from the union, or they are using it as a political stepping stone.
Conflicts of Interest should NOT be allowed on the school boards, if someone has a connection to the union or pension, they should not be able to serve.
Voters must attend the meetings and demand change. Teachers go after the administration not the kids! Also you can pay more than 1.5% for benefits.
Keep listening to your union, they will put you right out of work. But pay your dues first, so they can run more lies on the TV
By refusing to allow local districts to re-open contracts, the NJEA is exposing their agenda -- they don't care about the livelihood of their members. Bargaining contracts could lead to less layoffs, but the NJEA would love to see a mass amount teachers laid off so they'd have political ammunition against Christie.
It's a joke, a cheap political tactic done under the guise of "protecting principles", and the poor teachers are too stupid to see past it.
Let me say this
most teachers are not overpaid.
10 years in with a masters degree and they only make about 55,000.00 per year.
yeah they have perks like not working summers but they put in long hours. My wife spends hours after school and at night meeting with parents, grading papers preparing lesson plans.
Im not griping. They are not underpaid either. And yes they should contribute to health care benefits. I also agree that tenure is a problem. I am not a big fan of the union.
My point is that teachers are not the main reason it costs a public school over 12 grand a year to educate a kid. It is because of State Mandates. Prople do not realize how little control School Boards have over their budget because of all the things the state and federal government make them pay for. Charter schools are cheaper primarily because they escape those mandates. For instance charter schools do not have to pay for out placement of extremly disabled children. Just one of theses students can cost a district 60 to 100 thousand a year.
Another point (and Middletown proves this.)
Consolidation will not save money.
Middletown is a huge district yet there per pupil cost is no lower then many districts 3 times smaller.
You want lower property taxes then remove mandates or fully fund them.
Removing state aid without removing mandates will beggar our schools and will hurt our children
Don't teachers get prep periods to mark papers, preapare lessons etc. So they meet with parents about 4 times a year after hours. Who hoo. What about the winter break, spring break and summers off.
I know for a fact that HS teachers have recycled lesson plans for years, some even recycle the tests.
$55,000 for a part time job with tenure, life time benefits and pension. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to those of us who work year around, can get fired at any time and don't teach just 5-1/2 hours a day. Gotta love the clueless nature of the teachers and their spouses, they really beleive they got it tough. Don't like that teaching gig try making it in the real world. There are plenty of people who would kill for that deal. P.S. A masters of PHd in Education is like a associates degree, no big deal.
You people are clueless. You only read what you want too.
First I made it clear I don't think teachers have a bad deal. But they are not overpaid either
Teachers prep times are usaully taken up by students who need help and meetings with child study teams, guidance counsellors and administrators.
Good teachers are constanatly updating their lesson plans and In my wifes case she does not teach all the same classes every year. In fact a tear ago she developed a new course for her school. Meetings with parents are not just 4 times a year she has meetings with parents of children that are having problems all the time.
Yeah its nice to have 10 weeks off in the Summer. No doubt about it.
But I know they work as hard as any proffesion during the school year. If my wife did not have the summer off she would rightfully be entitled to nake more money.
Oh and the Masters is not in Education. She has an MBA.
The whole point of this is not griping it is that no one is focusing on the real reason our schools are so expensive.
GOVERNMENT MANDATES
Our schools are overregulated, they have had too many responsibilities put on them that have nothing to do with education.
They are not free to innovate
And the mandates they are given are not fully funded.
These are the things that need to be fixed.
Instead we get more regulation and less money.
Our schools are being killed.
So I bread in todays paper that Rible wants to cap superintendent salaries at 141,000.00 per year.
Now I think somw towns over pay their administrators, Long branch and freehold come to mind. But I also do not think over 150 grand is unreasonable. Not to say that intelligent people can't disagree on that.
here is my question. I thought republicans wanted to make schools more competetive. I thought they believe in the free market.
Should not the Market and the voters in a town decide what salaries should be.
A much better solution is to allow one year contracts so at the end of every year they can be let go with or without cause.
We do not need more micro management from the state we need them to take off the hand cuffs and let schools operate more like businesses. that includes embrassing free market principles.
Maybe you just need a statewide formula that says this is the maximum you can spend at each level.
Regarding the cuts, I don't think this is the proper approach. I agree with cutting spending. But here we are cutting spending without any property tax relief. All pain and no gain.
I think much more should have been taken from the Abbott districts and less from the suburban districts.
Do I agree with the teachers? Not really. It wouldn't hurt to raise class sizes some. We had 25 to 28 children in each of my classes when I was growing up. I think we should look to move back to that sort of class size but not in one year.
Would I have benefitted from smaller class sizes? Probably not. A lot of times I just didn't want to be bothered even participating in class. Did I want more attention from the teacher? Not really.
Have to say that No Child Left Behind was another bad GWB idea and should be completely scapped. Not fully funded. Scrapped.
When I went to school, the parents got report cards every six weeks. That was how they knew what you were doing. Now, they have the staff has the time to monitor everything the student does. Every homework assignment can be monitored. Is this good? As a parent, its good to have information on your child? But if it costs another $1,000 to $1,500 to do this (because of additional staff needs), do we really want this? I don't know if its worth it.
Talk all you want but remember to vote on the school budget. Motivated "yes" voters have resulted in budget approval with little "no" voter participation. Vote, and get others to vote in the poorly promoted education budget vote to keep taxes down.
Is anyone organizing a Parent or Taxpayer Rally in Middletown? It needs to be done. The Mayor said no cuts to teachers or programs if the teachers take a salary freeze. The MTEA did not even give the courtesy of a response. How about Lawn Signs
Middletown Teachers Take the Pay Freeze......
Do It For the KIDS!!!!
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