(See pdf below.)
In a previous comment, Teachers Union President David Mielke rightly said Culver City USD teacher salaries are about 10 percent below the L.A. County median. He suggested negotiating a 2 percent annual increase for five years to reach the County median target.
While giving his latest public update on School District/union negotiations, he finally acknowledged that the union’s goal –for members’ salaries to be equivalent to the median salaries of other County teachers – actually is an ever-increasing moving target.
If the County median salary goal were adopted by our district, it would have to not only give the teachers the previously mentioned 2 percent bump each year, but, in addition, it would have to continue to match the ongoing rise in the County’s median salary as other districts re-negotiate their employee contracts.
X-Factor
The union’s goal is to give certificated members 2 percent plus the unknown annual escalator, an X-factor, that would be set by the other 45 districts in L.A. County.
How does one negotiate a contract with an ongoing, unknown X-factor?
As presented, the Teachers Union actually is asking the School Board to give up its local control of 85 percent of its budget and have other L.A. County districts dictate what the Culver City USD spends on its employee compensation.
Ever-Changing Offer
The example Mr. Mielke gave was that if the County median figure increased by an average of 2 percent annually, Culver City would have to come up with, say, an extra 2 percent each year, totaling a 4 percent raise, to catch up. That would mean that the union’s previous 10 percent over five years has escalated to well over a 20 percent raise across the next five years.
Average Isn’t Good Enough?
This year’s average Culver City USD teacher salary is $64,343. Multiplying that salary figure by Mr. Mielke’s suggested 4 percent factor every year would mean that in five years the average teacher would be drawing over $78,000 annually.
I started wondering what the last few years would have looked like if the Culver City USD had paid its teachers the County median the Teachers Union now wants.
The accompanying spreadsheet shows what the CCUSD would have had to pay its teachers had it adhered to the County median for the last 13 years.
Note: In every year, the median County salary is $2,000 to $3,000 above the average County salary. Does that mean the average County salary was not enough for the union? I guess it was not.
See spreadsheet here.
Budget Slayer
As you can see by the total in the lower right-hand corner, if our Culver City USD had followed this course, it would have paid almost $15M more in salaries – just to teachers. That is not even accounting for the extra salary amounts paid to the classified and management employees.
Feed Me
The suggestion of using the County median is a nice sound bite. However, when examined over an extended period, it can become a locally uncontrollable, ravenous monster eating up our District budgets.
Bigger Deficits
It would have meant no $12M District reserve, no athletic field, no Robert Frost Auditorium renovations, no solar project. The District would be looking at $3M more in its current deficit spending.
More Now, More Incentives Later
The School Board needs to realize that any long-term agreement to raise District salaries could be counterproductive. By locking in salary increases over a long period, it may make our higher salaried employees – those whom you want to retire –remain on the job to build up their pensions, and hold off on retiring. This would force the District to further sweeten its retirement incentives for these Boomer-aged teachers to even consider retiring.
Mr. Laase may be contacted at GMLaase@aol.com
