Last week, the Herricks Teachers Association spoke out against the Herricks Board of Education for posting parts of the board’s initial proposals on their website.
I guess they feel the public, who pays the bill, have no right to be informed of details regarding the course of the negotiations.
In our community, there is a lot of pride in the school district. The teachers deserve a fair share of the credit for this, as without good teachers you will not attain a good education for the students.
I have lived in this community for over 15 years now, but have only had children in the schools for the last seven years.
With the economics as they are, I fear that my children will not be able to get the education that their peers from past years got. Over the last few years, about 100 teachers have already been let go, causing class sizes to increase fairly dramatically.
This is not good for the students, and is also not good for the remaining teachers – their jobs became much more difficult. One thing I have difficulty in understanding is if I was a teacher here, I would have been more than willing to forgo a 3 percent raise knowing it could help save numerous colleagues jobs. I’m guessing most of the teachers felt that way, just not their association.
The following is an e-mail I sent to the board of education on January 26th regarding my opinion on opening negotiating stances.
To the board of education for the Herricks UFSD:
First, I would like to thank all of you for the hard work you put in managing the affairs of our school district.
I was just looking through the information on the Herricks website regarding the contract negotiations with the teachers.
One thing I notice is there is no information regarding what the school district is proposing regarding salary changes in the upcoming contract.
My personal feeling, in light of what occurred over the last couple of years, and the unions lack of concern – as evidenced by choosing layoffs over givebacks, is that I would like to see the schools beginning bargaining position be the teachers giving back some of the raises they received over these years (i.e. they should have a pay cut).
Especially when you add contractual raises to step raises teachers receive, they have done better than most in the community.
I am not saying that the end point of the negotiations necessarily should be a pay reduction, although this would be nice.
The point must be made that the community feels the teachers union was not looking out for the interest of the community.
Even if no reduction is obtained, the idea of a raise with any substance would be hard to stomach.
Joseph Flynn
Manhasset Hills
