Why This Year's BOE Budget is Different: Part 2

This is the second in a series of posts on education funding issues facing Manchester’s BOE. 

As I said in my first post on this issue, for the last three years, Manchester’s education budget has increased, on average, at half the rate of inflation.

One of the ways that the BOE was able to accomplish this is by negotiating labor wage freezes with its unions. Wage freezes are helpful in the short-term to keep costs down, but in the long term they make our teacher salary schedules less competitive when compared with other nearby districts, making it harder to retain and attract high quality teachers. 

I’m often asked why we can’t freeze teacher salaries for (yet another) year, rather than cut programs, which directly affect students.  Said another way, why can't we close the budget gap by not giving teachers raises or by reducing the raise amount, rather than by eliminating targeted programs?

First, the BOE cannot unilaterally "take back" salary increases because the contracted raises resulted from negotiated union agreements with employees.  We would instead need to request of the unions that they re-open negotiations with the BOE.  While that is certainly a possibility, there are a couple of problems with this approach. 

First, each union would look for a concession in exchange for any "give back" such as this. This would mean kicking the can down the road, making the problem worse in the future, as we would be pushing costs from the current budget to future budgets.  Just this sort of short term strategy is partly why we are where we are this year.

More importantly, we need to be careful to ensure that certified salaries (especially those of teachers) remain competitive with other districts, so that we keep high quality staff teaching our students.  If there is one thing that all agree on in the education reform debate, it’s that students achieve at higher levels when they have a high quality teacher teaching them. 

The contracted salaries for Manchester’s public school teachers (the largest union under the BOE) are not as market competitive as they should be.  For example, Manchester’s salaries are $3,000 to $8,000 less than what teachers in East Hartford earn. While higher teacher salaries aren't the only way to hire and retain high quality teachers, it is certainly a big component. 

Getting a concession to eliminate or reduce the salary increases isn’t necessarily in the best interest of the school district or students, as it would be an across the board reduction. An across the board reduction affects every program and student, whereas targeted program elimination does not.  Further, an across the board adjustment will make it harder to hire and retain teachers throughout the district.  We already struggle to hire minority teachers  and instructors in important areas such as math and science.  An across the board reduction or elimination of salary increases will only make these problems worse.  

The bottom line is that freezing or reducing the increase in teacher salaries is not a realistic or productive way to address potential budget shortfalls in Mancheseter's BOE budget.

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog are that of Board of Education Chairman Chris Pattacini and do not reflect the views of the entire Manchester Board of Education.