June 3rd - Patty's email

Hi,

What an ugly day. The email from Patty is devastating. I have a hard time imagining worse news. It really makes things tougher than they were and to top all of her news is the fact that we are in negotiations this year and we do not have a contract for next year yet.

I hear a lot about cutting days, and the budget proposal in Patty's email suggests cutting days, which hurts everyone. The thing that is missing from all of this is how much will you earn in the first place next year. We were proposing a 0% increase, but you would get your step and people at the bottom of the salary scale were going to get a longevity increase - these were our proposals because we saw how much money the district was going to have to pay in order to keep our insurance where it is currently. The disticts proposal was much less, in fact if you were on a family plan and took ODS or Providence you would see your out of pocket cost for insurace per month go from $127.25 to $546.97! That is real money and will really impact you next year unless we go to a lesser insurance or are able to negotiate more money from the district, which at this point seems like a longshot. So when you look at those two things, cutting days and increasing insurance costs, you are talking about a lot of money.

We do not have anything set in stone yet - but there are a lot of things to think about. I do understand that people are losing their jobs and being reduced and that is painful, I know, I have gone through that myself as a young teacher a number of times and it is no fun.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a lot to consider and we as a union need to think about all of the balloons that are in the air right now and really try to think through what would be best for us today and in the future.

I am attending a meeting with Patty and the board on Friday - we will see what happens next. It is all really upsetting and unsettling and we need to be thoughtful and careful about how we proceed and not jump to decisions.

Hang on, summer is coming.

Keith