Mequon Teachers Pack School Board Meeting
About 80 teachers and their supporters packed a Mequon-Thiensville
School Board meeting Monday night (January 21, 2002), demanding a fair
settlement to their 2001-03 contract negotiations.
Like their colleagues in more than 300 school districts
in the state, Mequon-Thiensville teachers have been without a contract
since June 30, 2001. After eight years of salary stagnation under the
Qualified Economic Offer law, they say they will not settle for a contract
that continues to provide salary increases below the rate of inflation.
The
school board is offering nothing more than the standard QEO contract of
3.8% total package for salary and benefits. Because rising health insurance
costs are eating heavily into the salary portion of that increase, that
translates into an annual salary increase of 0.2%, or about $100, for
the most experienced teachers in the district. Under the school board's
offer, a new teacher will receive a salary increase of about $50 a year,
said Homestead High School teacher Jeff Conn.
"The major message we would like to get across
to the school board this evening is that despite the fact we live in a
very wealthy school district that taxes its residents at a very low tax
rate and builds beautiful buildings for its residents, it cannot find
enough money to pay teachers a cost of living wage increase," Conn
said.
The Mequon-Thiensville Education Association has adopted
the WEAC statewide bargaining goals, which call for per-cell salary increases
of 3.4% per year, no take-backs in benefits, bargaining over WEA Insurance
Trust long-term care insurance, and discussion of locally developed school
quality initiatives.
MTEA Chief Negotiator Joan Heithoff said the QEO, which
was passed in 1993, put severe restrictions on teacher salaries during
the economic boom of the 1990s, when per-capita income in Wisconsin and
throughout the nation was rising dramatically.
"When there was economic prosperity in the 1990s,
we did not see that prosperity," she said.
Now, in a recession, teacher salaries are falling even
further behind.
"I am a teacher who has taught more than 15 years
and have a master's degree plus 50 credits so I'm at the top or our salary
schedule - and that's where one-third of our teachers are - and we're
being offered a $100 a year raise," Heithoff said.
She said she is concerned about the long-term impact
of low teacher salaries on the quality of education in the district as
experienced teachers leave.
"There are several teachers who decided to retire
this year because they would earn less teaching next year than they would
earn in retirement," she said.
Conn and Heithoff said the Mequon-Thiensville School
District used past savings from the QEO to build up its reserve funds,
which then were used for building construction. Another construction referendum
is scheduled for February. Again, she said, "They did not seek to
use the referendum process to bring any relief to teachers."
"We've seen a lot of results in brick and mortar,
but we haven't seen it in wages," Conn said.
Teachers carried signs outside the school board meeting,
then packed into the meeting room and peppered board members with questions
during the public comment portion of the meeting.
MTEA members have engaged in several activities for
weeks to protest the lack of progress in negotiations and to educate the
public about their plight. Actions have included working to rule, which
means refusing to work beyond hours required by the contract; wearing
buttons to work; distributing flyers at school open houses, and placing
ads in the newspaper.
A final negotiation session is scheduled for January
28, and a mediation session is scheduled for February 14.
Among the points made in flyers and ads:
- Mequon-Thiensville teachers have lost $1,000 to $2,000 in salaries
to inflation since the QEO was imposed in 1993.
- Mequon-Thiensville School District has the lowest tax rate of 14 nearby
districts. Property taxes are increasingly driven by municipal and county
costs, and by business tax breaks.
- In 1999, the average pay for Wisconsin teachers fell below the national
average for the first time since 1978.
- Wisconsin teachers with bachelor's degrees earned $10,000 less on
an annual basis than other workers with bachelor's degrees in 1998.
Resource page on Qualified Economic
Offer law
Posted January 22, 2002