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Cuba City teacher Becky Cohen chats with State Rep. Phil Gartwaite outside the Joint Finance Committee's legislative hearing in Prairie du Chien. Cohen asked the committee to support Governor Doyle's proposals to increase funding for school breakfasts and school mentoring.
The Qualified Economic Offer (QEO) law is undermining teacher morale and forcing teachers to leave the profession, Prairie du Chien teacher Jeff Riter told the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee Wednesday (April 4, 2007).
 Jeff Riter |
"Workloads have increased, salaries have fallen behind inflation, and still we are attacked from all angles," Riter said at a public hearing on the state budget. "Many educators are taking on second jobs to make up for stagnant salaries. Some are leaving the profession to seek higher paying jobs in the private sector. Even more upsetting are the ones we never even see come to our profession because they know they can make a lot more money elsewhere.
"It has become quite obvious that the QEO is an unfair and arbitrary cap on the highly qualified and experienced educators in the state of Wisconsin," Riter said at a hearing in Prairie du Chien. "I respectfully ask you to vote to support Governor Doyle’s budget. It works to fund education adequately, repeal the QEO, and protect the greatest asset we have, our children."
Riter said the QEO took effect shortly after he began his teaching career and that he has had to take on extra jobs to make ends meet, "as have many of my colleagues in the teaching profession."
Between 1999 and 2005, he said, the most experienced teachers in the district saw a salary increase totaling $194.
"How does our profession attract and retain the 'best and the brightest' to teach our kids with a salary increase of $33 per year?" he asked.
Riter said the Prairie du Chien district has eliminated many offerings such as technology education and a foreign language in the middle school, cut librarians, slashed teaching assistants, and cut teaching staff in every core area.
"When teachers and support staff retire or move on, they are not replaced. Who takes on their workloads? It’s those who remain, many who carry a schedule so overloaded that they don’t have any time during school hours to prepare for their classes. A lack of school funding has limited learning opportunities for the children of Prairie du Chien," he said.
Cuba City teacher Becky Cohen asked the committee to support Governor Doyle's proposals to increase funding for school breakfasts and school mentoring.
She said the Cuba City district is in its first full year of the breakfast program, and she sees its benefits firsthand.
"Before we had the program, I remember discussing breakfast with my first hour algebra class, made up mostly of freshman. I was frightened by the number of students who ate nothing before coming to school," she said. "It bothered me so much that I decided if the students would commit to bringing food on one day of the week, I would bring food on Fridays. While students were well known to bring donuts and sometimes even popcorn on their days, I always tried to bring fresh fruit. ...
"With our breakfast program now, kids get even more choices such as cereal, breakfast pizza, French toast, fresh fruit, milk and juice. And, of course, the favorite day is the day with cinnamon rolls," Cohen said.
"The kids now come to class ready to learn," she said, adding that research shows that students who eat breakfast show an increased ability to learn, behave better, have better dietary habits and are less likely to be overweight.
Cohen also said it is extremely important to have strong mentoring programs for young teachers, citing statistics that almost 20% of teachers leave the profession in the first five years.
She asked the committee to support Governor Doyle's proposal to exempt from the revenue caps the cost of mentoring initial educators under the state's teacher licensing law known as PI 34.
The committee also heard from Cuba City Superintendent Sam McGrew, who said financial problems have forced his district to collect additional revenue by increasing student fees, raising admission to school events and asking voters "many times" to pass referendums.
"The cost reduction items have included elimination of two bus routes, reduction of hours of cooks, custodians, teachers’ assistants, and secretarial staff," he said. "We have eliminated two middle school teachers, a vocational/technical position, and reduced art, speech, early childhood, band, and physical education positions. We cut sports budgets, set limits on trips, reduced administrative raises, took one year out of our text book replacement rotation, and reduced standardized testing. We even closed a building and reduced the size of the Board of Education.
"None of this was designed to improve student achievement," McGrew said. "Every one of these cuts gave less service to our students. And still the local taxpayers are paying a larger share of the total cost of the education."
McGrew said the state is facing "a crisis in education funding," and that some of the provisions in the governor's budget will help ease the pain. He said these include increases in school district revenue limits, a change in the formula to help districts with declining enrollment, an increase in special education categorical aids, and maintaining two-thirds state funding of schools overall.
Posted April 5, 2007