I attended the Culver City Democratic Club meeting a week ago tonight, and I found it informative, in as much as it is clear that management for the city and management for the School District apparently share the same style.
I was particularly impressed with the eloquence of Desmond Burns, the president of the Culver City Employees Assn. I told him so after the presentation ended.
It was clear to everyone in the room that the city and the School District are dealing with the financial crisis wrought by both the California legislature and the federal government.
It is taking a toll on all of us.
But as Mr. Burns pointed out, it is about priorities.
It Is Not Logical
You cannot cut positions in one breath and then vote to pay someone an exorbitant salary in the next, not when you are anticipating massive deficits in the not-distant future that may result in insolvency.
While it may be true that both the School District and City Council are paying out the “majority” of their funds in salaries and benefits, that information is always reported as if that is a “problem” caused by greedy unions who always have their hands out for a larger piece of the pie.
While the governing bodies may want to paint unions as the proverbial “bad guys” (which is an unfortunate trend we are seeing across the nation), I would remind both the City Council and the School District that they are in the business of providing services to the community.
Whether they like it or not, those services are provided by people who deserve to be paid for the services they provide.
I am amazed that both entities feel they can continue to provide the same level of services the community has come to expect with fewer and fewer employees with which to do it.
At some point, other expenditures need to be pared back — whether it be independent consultant services, legal expenses, administrative salaries or the like.
Something New Must be Thought up
Ideas for bringing revenue into the city and School District need to be more aggressively pursued. When everyone in the audience was excited to hear that the School District was moving forward with the installation of eco-friendly solar panels, no one talked about the fact that the District dragged their feet about it for so long that there is more than likely no rebate money left that is still available to help us offset the cost.
On the school side, it was disheartening to see that School Board member Kathy Paspalis felt it was her job to correct Teachers Union President Dave Mielke rather than inform the audience.
When Mr. Mielke pointed out that there were an additional six teachers who may lose their jobs along with the 19.2 teachers who received their March 15 notices, Ms. Paspalis quickly corrected him.
She stated that because the six teachers Mr. Mielke mentioned had not received notices by the March 15 deadline, it was not possible to lay them off.
Take Another Look
However, the possible loss is clearly listed on the proposed cut list as Item 13. The District is considering an increase in class size (verbally explained at their Tuesday night meeting as an increase of one student per class) across all grade levels that would result in cutting six teachers at an alleged salary of $65,000 per teacher for a total savings to the district of $390,000.
And while the March 15 deadline is a well known date to teachers, once the state puts a budget in place, school districts can actually make certificated layoffs as late as August.
Again, when Mr. Mielke explained that school employees have not had a raise for the last few years and have had to absorb annual health insurance premium increases as well in those years, he was stating a fact.
Ms. Paspalis commented that Mr. Mielke was “very good at representing his members” because he failed to mention that they receive step-and-column increases. Her feeling was that teachers were, in effect, receiving annual increases (raises) that they were apparently keeping secret from the public.
Let me explain how step increases work for members of my association.
I’ll leave it to Mr. Mielke to explain the complexities of the teachers step-and-column framework because teachers receive more pay as they earn higher degrees.
But for the classified support staff it works like this: There are five salary steps for each classification (job). When you are first hired by the District, you are usually placed at the first salary step (unless you have exceptional previous experience, in which case you can negotiate a higher step for yourself prior to hire), and then if you successfully complete your initial probation, you are moved to the second.
The following year, if you receive a good evaluation from your immediate supervisor and are recommended for an increase, you move to step three, and so on, until you reach step five —the top step. There is approximately a 3 percent increase between each step. For those of us who have been with the District for more than five years and have “maxed out” at the top step, the only increases we get are those negotiated by the union.
So, if you aren’t receiving any raises, are absorbing three-digit medical premium increases (this year mine was $174 per month for just my husband and me), find yourself “maxed out” at the top of the salary scale and have then taken five unpaid furlough days this year on top of all that, forgive us if we aren’t excited about “giving back” even more next year because, according to one Board member, we haven’t given back enough yet.
Yet we had enough discretionary funds to pay Patti Jaffe, the new Superintendent, an annual salary of anywhere from $217,000 to $270,000, depending on the day of the week, who you are speaking with and what is being counted as part of her salary.
Quite honestly, the drama that followed Board member Karlo Silbiger’s suggestion that Mrs. Jaffe’s statutory benefits should be counted as part of her salary was brutal.
I remember a couple of years ago, during a meeting at Linwood E. Howe Elementary, I questioned why the salaries of my unit members on the cut list appeared so incredibly inflated. The answer that the Asst. Supt. Ali Delawalla gave me then was that the figures included base salary, medical benefits and statutory benefits. In other words, anything that is a financial encumbrance to the District is considered part of the employee’s salary — yet the same criteria doesn’t apply to the superintendent’s position?
I received quite a public rebuke from Board President Scott Zeidman at the Board meeting held in the City Council chambers recently for daring to suggest in a letter I sent to The Front Page Online that perhaps we had overextended ourselves regarding Mrs. Jaffe’s salary and that maybe other school districts could afford the salaries they were paying their superintendents.
Mr. Zeidman felt I was being absolutely ridiculous to suggest such a thing since every school district was in terrible financial shape right now. But doesn’t that prove my point? All districts are suffering financially, and yet all of them have made the choice to overextend themselves when it comes to paying their superintendents? And we used that as our excuse to foolishly follow suit? Where is the logic in that?
I know I’ve digressed from the original subject of this essay, but here is an interesting tidbit I’d like to share that may put this in perspective—regardless of how happy you were to see Mrs. Jaffe hired as our new superintendent.
According to an article that was recently printed in the Los Angeles Times, “the superintendent of New York City public schools, the nation’s largest district, makes $250,000.” Los Angeles is the second largest district. Yet John Deasy, the new superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, when offered a salary of $330,000 per year, voluntarily took a 17 percent paycut by agreeing to assume the superintendent position at the same salary he was being paid as deputy superintendent, $275,000.
Mr. Burns was exactly right when at the Democratic Club meeting he pointed out that something has to give.
If the unions are being told that salaries and positions have to be cut, and as he says, “pensions and medical are unsustainable,” then it follows that other expenditures are also unsustainable and need to be reduced.
We are depending on our elected leaders — both City Council and School District — to investigate more innovative ways to balance their respective budgets other than by making draconian cuts to staff and benefits.
Ms. Hamme, President of the Assn. of Classified Employees — Culver City, may be contacted at antiquer01@aol.com
