My Take On The Board Meeting-Stop the Pettiness

nonymous has left a new comment on your post "Last Nights Board Meeting ReCap":

how I see things...a non-teacher’s perspective...

it costs a lot to live on LI and taxes are high

we pay high taxes for our school systems and we knew that when we moved here

but we made that choice and sacrifice for high quality education

like any system, education in our district can use some improvement

teachers recognize this and have worked to make positive changes - math, IB, etc.

teachers live here too so they have high costs and high taxes also

union contract negotiations can be rough during the best economic times

contract negotiations could have begun earlier to reach a settlement so there would not have been a lapse in contracts

there is never any perfect economic time or certainty about the future so that wasn’t a good reason to postpone contract negotiations

school district business needs to be handled efficiently as possible - that means taking care of obligations, especially to the largest group they are comprised of - the teachers

the BOE is saying it's not about being teachers being deserving of getting paid more money - it's about being the community being able to afford and sustain the raises - and the subsequent effect of the raises on future pension costs

teachers are saying we're deserving and as much as we may love our jobs we're doing this because we need what's in our paycheck

the process should not be emotional or sidetracked by events that are emotional so I'll leave all that out

even with the best intentioned administrators, education won’t get better without support of the teachers in planning and implementation

lets stop the pettiness of what’s gone on these past few months and get to the business at hand – settle the contract and put the focus back on education