The Kettering Board of Education at its Feb. 16 meeting, this evening, will discuss its plans to place a 6.9 mill operating levy on the May 4 ballot. The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. in the Recital Hall of Fairmont High School, 3301 Shroyer Road.
The need for a 6.9 mill levy is based on a five year budget projection prepared by Kettering’s School Treasurer, Steve Clark. This school year (2009-2010), Kettering is spending $82.1 million to educate 7329 students, or, on average, $11,200 per student per year. The budget projection shows that within four years (2013 – 2014) Kettering will need a budget of $95.6 million, or $13,040 per student per year. This is an increase of 16.4%.
Since 85% of the school district budget always goes to salaries and benefits, almost all of this 6.9 mill tax increase will go to teachers and administrators. The 6.9 mill levy request amounts to a request to increase salaries and benefits of teachers and administrators, over the next four years, by 19% — from the current $69.7 million to the projected amount of $83 million.
Last year, the board approved a two year contract for teachers of a 1.5% increase per year. The last year for this contract is 2010 – 2011. The budget shows the 2009 – 2010 expenditure on salaries as $50.5 million and the 2010 – 2011 expenditure on salaries as $52.2 million — an increase of 3.32% above the expenditure of the previous year.
The reason why the total increase is shown to be 3.32%, rather than 1.5%, is because the 1.5% increase was added to the overall master contract. About 2/3 of teachers, according to the contract, each year earn increases in salary because of additional years of experience and / or additional academic credentials. Each “step” on the contract, on average, amounts to a 6% increase.
Usually teachers negotiate new contracts for a three year period, rather than a two year period as in this last contract, and this five year budget forecast shows that the school anticipates a new contract with a total 4.82% increase each year, for three years. Part of this 4.82% increase will come from the experience and training “steps” already in the master contract. But, about 2.5% -3% of this increase each year will be new money added to the contract.
It looks like the five year forecast anticipates a new three year teacher contract in which all teachers will receive at least a 2% – 3% increase in salary each year for three years, and in which about 2/3 of the teachers will also receive a 6% experience or training “step.” The way I read the budget forecast, the school treasurer is predicting a new three year teachers’ contract where most teachers (about 2/3) will receive an 8% increase each year beginning in 2011-12.
This year, the beginning salary for Kettering teachers is $35,000 per year, the ending salary is $80,000 or more, and the average salary for Kettering teachers is about $69,000.
Last year, the Kettering Board split 3-2 in approving the two year contract that gave 1.5% increase each year for two years. Jim Trent, President of the Board, voted against the pay increase and, according to the DDN, said, “I can support all the components of the negotiated agreement with our teachers except the pay increase. After receiving feedback from many of our citizens, observing the latest economic news, and giving this topic an unbelievable amount of thought, I have reached the conclusion that because of the current economic turmoil, the time is not right to approve an increase in pay for anyone.”
Here is a short video where Mr. Trent gives his opinion of the two year contract.
Board member, Frank Maus, also voted against the increase and is quoted by the DDN as saying, “Do the teachers deserve a raise? Yes, the teachers deserve a raise, but with the economic conditions, which our community is faced with today, a raise is not a prudent thing to do.”
Mr. Maus’ vote against the teachers’ pay increase may have cost him his board position. Of the three incumbents seeking reelection, Maus was the only incumbent board member who was defeated this past November, and he was the only board member who opposed the new teachers’ contract. The DDN reported, “Some Kettering teachers were angry when school board member Frank Maus voted last spring against a contract that called for a 1.5 percent raise for teachers. The two incumbents who voted for the contract — Julie Gilmore and George Bayless — were re-elected, while Mr. Maus narrowly lost to challenger James Brown.”
During the board campaign, I was a candidate for school board, and I discovered that school officials wanted to place a new 7 mill levy on the May ballot. I brought up the topic of this 7 mill increase in property tax whenever possible. Such an anticipated tax increase should have been discussed as part of the Kettering School Board election. But other board candidates and school officials denied they had made such plans and, during the election, I never succeeded in bringing about much public discussion about the matter.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME????????? You want to spend as much to educate 1 student as some residents working full/part time and/or retirement income earn on an annual basis!!!! You need to do a salary freeze!!!!! You need to know residents do not have a bottomless pit in which to give you MORE of our earned income to do all the extras you want for students. This increase is WRONG in so many ways. Unemployment for Kettering, fixed incomes, increase in property taxes, closed businesses. $19,000/yr. for benefits??? You can’t be serious!!! I’m outraged with ALL of the above information.
:) Go Barb!
Public education may not be as “free” as we have been told. Hmmm….wonder what my solution is?
Our Kettering based company had to lay off nearly 10% of workers last year and the rest of us took a 10% pay cut. No raises this year, but glad to have a job.
Of course this is nothing like what happened to GM which will affect tax revenues throughout the area.
6% raises for salaries as high as $80K, generous benefits, little risk of becoming unemployed, 3 – 4 months off a year … this is unsustainable. Time for Kettering schools to look to the private sector to learn how to do more with less.
sorry missread, benefits amount, I stand corrected on that only.
Mark, the longevity “step” increase of 6% for an additional year of employment applies to all teachers for their first 13 years of employment. Then there is a longevity step at the 19th year, the 23rd year, the 26th year and the 28th year. The point is, 2/3 of Kettering teachers received a 6% longevity step last year. This amounts to a nice raise. From the BA 13th step to the BA 14th step, for example, the salary goes from $58,207 to $60,274. (But then the BA 14th step to BA 18th step stays the same.)
There are also 8 “training” steps, in addition to the longevity steps, also for 6%, for any teacher who acquires additional University training. The first step is BS, then BS +18 is the next step, then BS + 35, then MA, then MA+18, then MA+36, then MA +54, then Doctorate.
The most common training step for Kettering teachers is the MA step and at the 28th year of experience, a teacher’s salary is $78,528. Most teachers at the upper end of the salary ($80,000+) would never receive a 6% training increase, so I don’t want to give the wrong information.
I will post this matrix when I get a better copy (hopefully today).
The system is broken.
Stop rewarding teachers for being “better educated” and staying in the system a long time. Lower their salaries to the market value and pay them in the same way that private sector employees are paid…based on value and scarcity. The marginal value of 1 teacher is virtually non-existent in most public schools. The scarcity of the resource? Not at all scarce. What is the result of low marginal value for a resource and abundant availability? Low value + abundance = low remuneration.
What is the value of a teacher with 12 years as opposed to 11? Is it really a 6% increase in value to the education of the student? This is nuts! If that is true then lets say at 14 years you are as good as you can be (100% effective). That means that if you have been improving 6% a year for the past 14 years you must have started at 48% effective! After 7 years you are 66% effective! Also, it is true for 14 year veterans that they are 100% effective, then why are we giving them any additional raises? This only substantiates that what you are actually saying is that teachers aren’t paid based on value at all. They are paid based on some people playing with other people’s money.
Solution: Let the market decide. Stop subsidizing education. The right answer as to how much a teacher should make is different for every teacher. Years in the system and education should not be the deciding factors. Marginal value should be the deciding factor. The marginal value can only be determined in a market and the market must be without interference in order to provide a proper valuation.
Want schools to function? Stop funding them with taxpayer dollars.
I do hope the Kettering Board of Education will reconsider asking for such a raise! Everyone must tighten belts now. . .no one is immune from this international economic correction. My husband is retired. . .and his pension has dropped 2% — we just have to adjust. In my business (real estate) there are all kind of signs that prices are dropping. . .many properties “underwater” (i.e., worth less than purchase price). Foreclosures have risen dramatically in January. This is just not the time to be asking for a raise by anyone. . .teachers are not exempt. In my opinion the Kettering School system would be making a bad mistake by making such a request of Kettering residents.
Jesse, I can’t agree that it is possible to have a viable system of public education without using tax dollars. But, I do agree that the current system needs a fundamental transformation. I agree with W. Edwards Deming that it is the system structure and overall organization that determines quality — 85% according to Deming — and so, we need to do the hard work of creating a better system. (See here, here, and here.)
I agree that a better system would be more based on free market and entrepreneurial principles and much less on bureaucratic and hierarchical structures.
Obviously, to accomplish fundamental system restructuring will be a huge challenge. I believe it can only happen through an applied sense of fairness to those in the present system and so it will require a transition over time. I taught for 30 years, and as a teacher I would have been happy for positive restructuring — and most teachers, I believe, want positive change. Meaningful transformation must happen via a strategy that gains significant support from those already in the present system.
In my campaign to be elected to the Kettering School Board, I advocated that the board create a ten year plan for fundamental change. What one vision of such a plan might seek to accomplish, I am working to outline in a book entitled, “Kettering Public Education In 2022.” Such a plan will redefine the purpose of public education and show how a transformed system will not only bring new levels of success — as educational success is now defined — but also show different dimensions of success that transcend what public education is now seeking to accomplish. Another goal of such a plan will be to show how tax dollars can be more efficiently used. I think we can have a superior system of public education for less cost than the present system, significantly less cost, but, I believe such a system will need to be supported with tax dollars. It is not realistic that a quality system of public education can arise without the support of taxation.
Anyone interested in improving their community needs to create wide-spread community support for such improvement. Such support requires a vision of an improved future that is inspiring as well as realistic.
wide-spread community support … requires a vision of an improved future that is inspiring as well as realistic
Looks to me that “improved future” will include demonstrated cost effectiveness.
The unions crippling grip on school districts may have to be broken.
Suggestions for budget help: 1)Eliminate automatic increases unless performance & peer pay increase 2)pay healthcare for school days-teachers personally pay summer vacation 3)Eliminate IB 4)Substitutes are paid by teacher for sick or personal days 5)Trim administrators and their salaries. Kettering has 4 more admins than schools its size in OH
Like any ‘business’, the time may have arrived when a ‘free” education is no longer a sustainable model.
Since the school board and supt had no ideas on how to trim budget, perhaps others could offer their suggestions?
John Stossel just did a program on DC Schools on Fox Business. He includes the state amount spent in his cost per student as we all contribute to the state level of schooling, too.
Mike, I am sure you can come up with the whopping cost per student, too.
link is
Correction on DC School Spending « John Stossel: http://bit.ly/9kZn1H via @addthis
Kathy, thanks for the link. Yes, the $11,200 per pupil per year amount I cite in this post is too low. It only the amount spent this year from Kettering School’s own “general fund” divided by the number of students. This amount fails to include other federal and state money spent on Kettering students. Stossel points out that the total per pupil should fairly include money spent on the state bureaucracy. I’m going to do better research and soon write another post with more accurate figures.