Second Year Teacher Questions Her Future
| |
| Blair-Taylor English teacher
Kim Joten helps sophomores Ashley Embke and Jon Paulson with a writing
assignment. "I love kids. I love my content area. But I don't
know if I have the energy to teach and fight tooth and nail for
raises every year," she said. |
In just her second year of teaching, Kim Joten says she worries that she
got into the wrong profession.
An English teacher at Blair-Taylor High School, she took a pay cut in
her first year, and worked without a contract throughout her second year,
meaning she received no pay raise.
She and her union colleagues just voted down the latest school board
offer for the 2001-03 contract. The vote was 49-2.
“I love kids. I love my content area. But I don’t know if I
have the energy to teach and fight tooth and nail for raises every year,”
she said. “Is this the way it always is in education?”
Joten’s case is indicative of how the Qualified Economic Offer law
is threatening to undermine the quality of teaching in Wisconsin by driving
people, young and old, out of the profession, said WEAC Collective Bargaining
Director Mike McNett.
“On the one end, we are losing high-quality, experienced educators
to early retirement. On the other end, we are driving frustrated young
teachers out of a profession which they perceive has no future,”
he said. “Then you have bright college students watching all this
happen. Who could blame them for switching their majors from education
to other more inviting professions?”
Joten said she is not looking to get rich, but neither did she expect
that after getting her college degree she would end up with a job that
starts out with low pay and gets worse every year.
“Teachers face enough stress without having to beg and plead for
a minimal raise,” she said. “I guess that’s what bothers
me the most. I feel like we’re supposed to beg.
“It makes me feel cheated,” she said. “I feel like a fool
preaching the value of education to kids who drive nicer cars than I will
ever be able to afford.”
The Blair-Taylor United Education (BTUEA) is bargaining its first contract
since an insurance related salary setback in 2000-01.
Last year, in the second year of a two-year agreement, the health insurance
premium jumped nearly 70%. The huge increase came about because the carrier
had previously given a low-ball rate to gain the business. By changing
to WEA Insurance, the increase was cut to below 50%. But the contract
provided only for a QEO 3.8% increase in total compensation in the second
year. The result was that no increments were paid and all the cells of
the salary schedule were reduced by $385.
This year, faced with an increase in health insurance premiums of nearly
25%, the bargaining has been difficult. The Blair-Taylor District has
a healthy and growing reserve – called a Fund 10 balance – and
yet has been very stingy at the bargaining table, said Coulee Region United
Educators Director Al Manson. After a year of hard bargaining, the school
board is threatening to impose a QEO. This would result in no change in
the recently reduced salary schedule, and the payment of only three-tenths
of an experience step increment.
The only positive aspect of such an imposed offer is that the district
would have to continue fully paid insurance.
Last fall, the board claimed in mediation that the parties were at deadlock.
The BTUEA finally got the school board back to the table this spring,
where the board increased its offer. However, there was a condition. The
school board offered total packages of 5% each year, but only on the condition
that the teachers pay a portion of the insurance costs with deductions
from salary. The teachers responded by offering to settle for the same
amount of money offered by the board, but distributed more evenly, and
with the continuation of full insurance payments.
The school board said it was done negotiating on money. It said that
the teachers had to take the board’s last offer or it would impose
a QEO. The mediator agreed that the board could do that.
The BTUEA set and held two meetings. At the first meeting, all BTUEA
members were provided with the last salary schedules proposed by both
sides, and a detailed description of what an imposed QEO would mean. A
discussion was held and a vote set for the second meeting one week later.
After a week of thought and analysis (with lobbying by the superintendent
for the board’s offer), the teachers voted, 49-2, against the board’s
offer.
Among the reasons for rejecting the board offer, and risking an imposed
QEO, was that the teachers felt the board’s last offer distributed
money unfairly. By attempting to take away the long-established benefit
of full insurance payments at a time when there is limited money, the
board’s offer provided some with raises (over two years) of more
than $3,200, while all those at the top of the salary schedule with family
insurance would see a net loss of $400.
Those getting no raise easily voted no. But so too did those who would
have gotten a big raise, because that raise would have come at the expense
of co-workers.
The Blair-Taylor teachers want to continue bargaining, Manson said. They
want to try to persuade the school board to distribute the same amount
of money more equitably among the teaching staff. BTUEA negotiators hope
the school board will see that would cost the district no more money to
settle with the BTUEA offer. If a QEO is imposed, there could be a great
cost to the district, in loss of staff morale and damage to its reputation,
Manson said.
“The recent vote by the Blair-Taylor teachers is a vote to stick
together in this time of trouble,” Manson said. “That’s
a good example for all WEAC members.”
Joten said she is proud of her union’s solidarity during very trying
times.
“Just when I think people are starting to buckle, they prove me
wrong,” she said.
But she has a hard time seeing light at the end of the tunnel. She remembers
that her teachers were constantly battling for fair pay when she was in
school.
“At times, I feel that if I leave the profession, and enough people
like me do so, maybe the powers that be will wake up and make some changes,”
she said.
Posted May 31, 2002