In the First Interim Report that will be presented to the School Board at tonight's 7 o’clock meeting in the District Office, there is an explanation in the Executive Summary about a teacher-only reimbursement of one of the nine previously taken furlough days.
Is this the same day being paid to teachers as the one-time, off-salary bonus that this Board agreed to give our teachers if Prop. 30 passed? Or is this an additional day being reimbursed?
Also, there is no mention in the summary of the monetary impact (over $100K) for this one furlough day reimbursement.
Precedent Setting?
Is this single furlough day buyback the start of a systematic plan to reimburse every teacher for all nine furlough days taken in the previous two years? It must be remembered that the use of furlough days only became necessary when the state Legislature tied the hands of every school district across the state. The California Federation of Teachers' pals passed a unique bill purposely aimed at denying school districts the use of one of their more traditional tools when needing to significantly reduce district expenditures. The legislature temporarily suspended the laying off of public school teachers.
Students Lost in Money Shuffle
But there is a much more important, moral question that needs to be answered before the payment of bonuses or reimbursements to any District employee: Are the students ever going to get back the instruction time they lost during the furlough days? Is the District even thinking about a plan for making up for the 30,000 hours a day lost in classroom time?
Otherwise, it will begin to look like this Board's mission is to enrich the salaries and pensions of teachers, not the continued enrichment of our students' education.
Mr. Laase may be contacted at GMLaase@aol.com
