By Charles Moton
Ms. Humphrey should have praised the Kelseyville Superintendent of Schools and Board of Trustees for quickly addressing a crisis. Instead, Ms. Humphrey ranted about how unfair the termination notices were and how one noble teacher would take a 50 percent pay cut. She noted several other self-proclaimed injustices as well. Unfortunately, there was very little substance in anything that she wrote.
First, salaries, wages, and fringe benefits account for about 80 to 85 percent of a district”s discretionary budget. So, if a district has to make deep cuts in the budget, where is the logical place to start? Salaries, obviously. Second, if the teachers were sincere about taking salary cuts, these cuts would have to be negotiated. Negotiations take months. In the meantime, the teachers who were to be terminated would be on the job. If the teachers did not agree to the cuts, the district would be deeper in the hole. And one should note, that teachers have rarely agreed to salary decreases. I can”t think of any CTA unit that has agreed to salary reductions, although I can think of many that have not.
California is in the midst of a budget crisis ? in the event Ms. Humphrey hasn”t heard the news. Everyone is going to have to make sacrifices, and life in our state is going to be changed because of it. It is silly to blame Kelseyville”s administration for being prudent and attempting to make the best of a bad situation. In fact, Ms. Humphrey”s rant about looking for cuts elsewhere is the same kind of thinking that got California into its current mess: Nobody in the Legislature wanted to make unpopular, but necessary, spending cuts.
Charles Moton
Lucerne
