Budget continues to grind away at DeKalb teachers

DeKalb is the next Clayton County, it’s only a matter of time at this point.

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My only question is Lewis,his replacement and the board going to do the same? My answer is no but,hell no! They do not practice what they teach.

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Rob…My friend just look at Dekalb,Fulton,Clayton and the city of Atlanta.They are the same already!You get what you voted for.

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Dekalb is having some tough decisions to make, but apparently their hands are tied. As a taxpayer or parent, I would be concerned how this will impact student achievement. Larger class sizes are inevitable.

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The toughest decision they will have to make,same as the STATE of
Georgia is which PORK do we leave in and get away with it.Sonny wants to build a horse barn,a football hall of fame,money to the little league in his home county and a school at UGA that can wait.

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How do you motivate teachers to meet the state mandated testing requirements in the classroom? Educating our kids should be a priority. Money is wasted daily at our State House with our State Representatives & Governor. Honestly, what have they done for us lately?

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Parents and teachers, please look at this. No wonder we can’t get teachers.

Position: Mechanic, Air Conditioner/Heat (HVAC)
Educational requirement: High school diploma or GED
Experience: 3 years
Salary: $43,111 to $58,665

Position: Teacher, Science, Language Arts, or Social Studies
Educational requirement: College degree
Experience: 3 years
Salary: $ 42,288 (salary for a teacher with 3 years of experience)
$ 58,248 (salary for a teacher with 20 years of experience)
$ 59,376 (salary for a teacher with 30 years of experience)

Below is the job description on PATS for HVAC personnel (DCSS currently has 5 openings):
“The Mechanical Maintenance Department is seeking a qualified HVAC Mechanic. The minimum requirements include a High School Diploma or GED equivalent. A minimum of three (3) years experience in HVAC installation and control systems is required. Two (2) years experience in industrial or commercial HVAC is preferred.
Position: Mechanic, Air Conditioner/Heat
Salary: $43,111.20 to $58,665.60”

Chime in teachers and tell us the service you get from HVAC. Their position requires a high school diploma and 3 years experience. Most of you will never make the salary they make.

The BOE wants to cut teacher salaries and teacher positions. Now you know why outsourcing is a great idea. If this doesn’t make you want to write your BOE members, I don’t know what will.

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Hey mighty ODE, Organization of DeKalb Educators, you going to tell teachers to wear black again? Not quite like taking a real stand, which would have been calling for cuts in administrative bloat. But I guess it’s hard to do that, when many of your dues paying members are part of the administrative bloat.

Dekalb teachers who are also ODE members, if you joined an organization that seemingly placed a higher priority on protecting cuts in administrative bloat than they did cuts in teacher pay, the question might not be why is this happening to me; the question might be why am I choosing to be an active co-creator in my own misery?

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I must have touched a nerve. You must be a Service Center employee?

Your idea that teachers and students i.e. the classroom are somehow expendable is pretty typical of many of the 6,500 employees that are not teachers. If it weren’t for those pesky teachers and students, everything would be fine.

We cannot have a quality educational system with only half of our employees as teachers. I’ve already written every BOE member asking them to cut, consolidate, and outsource as much as possible in the admin and support area before considering touching the classroom (teachers and students).

Please write your BOE member parents/taxpayers and express your opinion. Here is a link to the DeKalb website BOE page. Click on each member’s name and write them an email.
http://www.dekalb.k12.ga.us/board/members/

If you want to write one email that reaches every BOE, go to the DeKalb School Watch blog (see link below). Above the Comments section on the right hand side of the webpage you will see an email link named CLICK HERE to Email the entire DCSS board of Education.
http://www.dekalb.k12.ga.us/board/members/

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Dekalb teachers are the only metro Atlanta teachers to have not had step increases in years, and now we are to take a cut? What about the 982 administrative positions? This is a SCHOOL system. Jobs that do not directly impact students should take the cuts. America’s Choice should be cut.
@ mighty ODE—I am a proud member of ODE and I know for a FACT, that they have lobbied the board for the past several YEARS to cut the fat at the top. What I also know, is that without any real union, we have no real negotiating power. Do you know of any other organization that actually gets called in to talk to Dekalb heads, and actually have their demands met? If so, please share. In the mean time, stop criticizing the ONLY organization to actually stands up to DCSS instead of cowering.

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say what? Good post on outsourcing DCSS services.

I agree with you. DCSS needs to gets bids on outsourcing jobs like Kitchen Mechanic and HVAC Mechanic. Let’s see what the market will bear for technical jobs such as these. Even if the salaries are comparable, we can cut our benefits and retirement costs (25% benefits and retirement override) for these employees and plow that money back into the classroom to help lower our pupil teacher ratio.

I’m sure you’ll agree that our students are the most important people in our school system and the only reason our school system exists. Outside the classroom, all costs need to be brought down by any means necessary.

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OK – here are the US stattistics for these positions – Average nat’l is $42k – and the middle 50% earn from $31 -$51 k – and this is likely private positions with normal (not inflated public sector) benefits. Google it and confirm for yourself. Outsource, indeed!

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I thought the DeKalb staff did a good job with the spreadsheet they distributed during the meeting. Essentially it lists the various options (about 43), cost impact for each, then several scenarios, all totaling over $95 million dollars. What was scary is that in several of the options, about 50% of the burden for addressing this deficit is placed on current employees (1/2 for not matching retirement, 1/2 for furloughs/across the board salary cuts). IMO, furloughs will be preferred over salary cuts as that can impact their retirement payout. I don’t think employees will be happy at all with the non payment into retirement.

We should all acknowledge, what is happening in DeKalb is happening in most school districts around the county. It is being publicized more in ATL because of all the media attention already on the county. All districts will have tough decisions regarding what to cut in the budget, if they haven’t already made those decisions.

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Ramona Tyson, the interim superintendent, built up DCSS MIS to a incredibly bloated bureaucracy of 250 staff and and $24 million budget. The thing is, MIS provides horrendous service and tech support to our teachers. if an administrator has a computer issue, bam, it’s fixed. Our teachers have to wait and wait and wait, and some are using ten year old computers!

DCSS is a cesspool of bloat. It focuses only on the Central Office, and ignores the clasroom and school buildings.

And the DeKalb Online Academy is wasteful and mediocre. There is no need for it since the state has a solid online academy. But DOLA does provide a job for our own county commission Sharon Barnes Sutton, who we all know about her recent issues.

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A correction in regard to ODE. There does not seem to be a specific sentence saying they oppose any cuts, as much as there is the statement that they could find no significant cuts to make, and therefore they supported the decision to cut the teacher retirement benefit.

Still, in a system well known for its administrative bloat, doesn’t the fact that ODE claimed they could find no significant cuts to make not suggest that they placed a higher priority on protecting administrative bloat, than they did protecting the retirement benefit that was at least temporarily cut?

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As a teacher, I wouldn’t mind the HVAC and other Mechanic workers making that much money, if they did their job correctly the first time. The problem that I see, is that we hire people and they don’t really know what they are doing so we sit without air or heat for months at a time.

I would prefer to contract it out, however, I am not sure if the board would actually expect those contracted it out to do the job correctly the first time. It doesn’t appear to be the DCSS way to do things correctly the first time.

As a teacher, I find it difficult working for a system that doesn’t follow the golden rule that I was raised with: Do it right the first time. This goes for educating the children to fixing something not working properly.

I hope that all employees who are making over a certain salary threshold are going to see a pay reduction and not just teachers and administrators.

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@ mighty ODE: Are you a critics of the teachers’ associations in GA or are you a member of PAGE or MACE. If it is the latter, then shame on you. Quite frankly, none of the teachers’ associations haven’t done much to support their members or their memberships’ interests. However, if I were to choose between the three, I would choose ODE, a local affiliate of GAE, because of their national connection with NEA. In addition, they have done a lil’ “sumthin’ sumthin’” (protest at the school board in January…unfortunately, only once) this school year. If it is the former, then I agree with you that teachers’ reliance in these organizations will set them up for heartache. One will do what is allowed; if the teachers allowed the status quo to continue, then they have no one to blame but themselves. This is NOT the time to be complacent or comfortable, teachers.

Before teaching in GA, I taught in an unionized state and was affiliated with AFT. Since I don’t work in APS and NEA allows adminstrators within their membership folds, I don’t have memberships in any of the teachers’ associations here. (I will say, however, I do like MACE’s philosophy, but because it is not linked to a national organization and it is rumored that their teacher-members are black-balled, I don’t know…)

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I’ll be honest, I am a teacher and I don’t really care that administrators are part of the teacher’s associations because the primary reason these associations exist in a non-union state are to advocate for public education — the working conditions of the educators and the learning conditions of the students — both of which go hand in hand. In my honest opinion, why should a teacher work his or her way up into administration and lose any right to advocacy when he or she needs it? I’m not saying some administrators don’t abuse their positions, but I know for a fact that when that happens, even if they are members, the policy of GAE is to advocate for the “lowest ring on the totem pole” — in other words the teacher.

As far as this particular situation in DeKalb is concerned, I am hoping that the board is looking long and hard at all options to prevent cuts to the classroom. I wonder about the vacant schools and why they are not on the market — if they are sold, not only will that bring an influx of cash to the table, but also add taxable property to the county so it will benefit us in the long run. I think the schools that are scheduled to go off of block scheduling next year should postpone that because it will result in the necessity of large textbook purchases — something we certainly don’t need to add to the bottom line right now.

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mighty ODE, what I am suggesting is that you have not offered any solutions yourself other than to bash the only organization that is at the table and making a difference in the management of DCSS.

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Mo Freddie — GAE’s administrative membership is about 3%. Since it is an affiliate of NEA, it is governed by the Representative Assembly, so where do you think the real power of this association lies? Not with the administrators. I can’t say much about PAGE now, but I do know its history and you are right there, it was founded by DeKalb administrators who didn’t want to give up power to the Representative Assembly — they actually disaffiliated from NEA to not have to do so. If that’s still the case, I don’t know, but nevertheless, as far as GAE is concerned, I’m not worried about 3%.

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mighty ODE — I have seen it in action, so I know the system works. Again, where are the solutions? We are facing a deficit of $88,000,000. I don’t like to say it, but I have to agree with at least one assessment that there must be a millage rate increase. We do need to trim the fat and ODE has argued for this and continues to do so. I wonder, though, how excluding part of the educational system can possibly advance the goals of an organization who prides itself on advocating for excellence in public schools? Whether we like it or not, we will have administrators, so let’s work for a common solution.

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d I have proposed a solution, but the blog creature ate it.

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wow I touched a nerve. I agree that HVAC should be outsourced, and the most qualified should be hired. As a parent I am angered when I see two or three tech’s come out to a school, and then the custodians are needed to help them do their jobs. The main computer that controls air/heating should be switched to regional computers that control upto 5 schools at a time. Something else has to be done with HVAC.

I never said that teachers and students are pesky, but the school SYSTEM is more than teachers and students. All stakeholders and employees should align themselves to the goal of students achieving and graduating. I do find that some of the blog comments are always centered around what the teachers are sacrificing. Many others sacrifice as well in this downturn. Take for instance the $400K being used in Clayton to keep up with buses- teachers think that money should go to their salaries. If DCSS had a tracking system, we would better see the amount of diesel being used for drivers to stop at QT, go to the grocery store, etc.

We are all in this together, and I do empathize with teachers and students.

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The most significant consequences of most of Georgia’s school finance system is that too much revenue is targeted toward administering school programs and budgets rather than raising student achievement. More money is allocated towards central office and resource instructional positions than to classroom level instruction. Many of the supervisory and resource instructional positions do not clearly increase student achievement.

It is critical to work toward an education budget process that encourages cost-consciousness at the local level, shifts resources from non-instructional budget categories into classroom-level spending, and truly equalizes per-pupil funding based on the individual characteristics of students

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I just read something that was quite interesting….

“Other states have reduced overall spending while increasing per-pupil spending by shutting down categorical programs. According to the Sacramento Bee, the state of Maryland went through a comprehensive two-year process to streamline categorical programs. A new system was adopted in the 2002-2003 school year that called for increasing basic per-child “foundation” amounts over a six-year period, from about $4,300 to more than $6,100. One of the most significant changes in Maryland involved ending state categorical programs. Maryland got rid of about 30 of its categoricals and added the revenue to the basic allocations. The elimination of the 30 Maryland categoricals freed up more than $300 million a year that helped boost foundation funding for all students. In other words, more money was targeted to students and less money went to administering programs in Maryland.”

Perhaps something our Georgia systems could consider….this may help reduce the administrative positions throughout the state. More emphasis on the classroom – less emphasis on administration of programs.

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