When the Teachers Union Goes Too Far

This week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie called teachers union leaders “political thugs”. At the same time, the people of Wisconsin repelled the national labor unions who attempted to overturn an anti-union law by electing a left-wing state supreme court justice. Meanwhile, anti-union bills and executive orders have been marching forward in other states across the country.

It’s a dramatic turnaround from two years ago when the nation elected the most pro-union president in our history.

So, what happened? In short, the unions overreached during a financial crisis and refused to share in the national sacrifice.

As for why there’s so much animosity towards public unions, here are a few local stories from my short stint on the school board.

When unions work for private companies, they understand that if they demand too much the company will go bankrupt. Public unions have no such restraint. When the custodians were about to be outsourced, rather than offer meaningful concessions, the union leaders shamelessly demanded we raise taxes to the max and then distributed flyers claiming the school board was endangering the children just to save a few bucks.

That part the public knows. What the public didn’t know was that the custodians had sent signals to the administration that they were willing to take pay and benefits cuts to save their jobs. They were willing to meet us part way. But their union representatives refused to allow them to make the offer. The custodians considered creating a separate union but there wasn’t time. And they were warned against acting without union support.

In other words, any chance the custodians had of saving their jobs was stomped by their union representatives. As for the “infamous email,” I and the other school board members still retain a copy ready to go public in case the union leaders “misbehave”.

The same thing is going to happen to the transportation personnel. They may have dodged the bullet this year but it’s going to happen. Holmdel just outsourced their transportation department. The bus drivers have sent signals to the administration but the union won’t allow them to negotiate to keep their jobs. The union would rather see the bus drivers fired than offer job concessions.

There was the time we hired a wonderful young lady who was excited to secure a job with good pay and benefits during a recession. When we hired her, she agreed to a salary that placed her among the top half of school employees.

After she began work, her union leaders told her she was being grossly underpaid, that she was doing “administrator” level work, and that she must demand fair pay. Sure enough, within a couple months of starting work, she filed a grievance against the district demanding a 60% salary increase.

A few months later, the superintendent provided the board a long list of possible cuts. Not one board member suggested keeping this woman and she lost her job.

Then there’s the administrator who was grossly negligent in administering a district-wide exam. Rather than fess up, he participated in a cover up. When the board learned the truth, they withheld his raise that year. In the private sector, most people would have lost their jobs but the district has spent thousands of dollars in legal fees defending its right to withhold the employee’s raise.

There was another employee who filed a grievance against being moved to work at another school building within the district.

There was the grievance when the district decided to stop paying teachers for speaking to each other. There was the “Aberdeener Grievance” demanding the school board attempt to silence me. And the list goes on.

It’s no surprise that tenure charges haven’t been successfully brought against a single New Jersey teacher in over a decade. The teachers union is actively involved in “screening” administrative judges who review alleged legal violations. For example, we had one case of an employee who kept disappearing during the day. After a couple of warnings, the employee was fired. The judge ruled we had given the employee insufficient warning and terminating the employee was unduly harsh.

When a grievance involves contractual issues, the district goes before a mutually agreed upon arbitrator who gets paid by the hour. At the state level, the teachers union maintains a list of preferred arbitrators and these arbitrators won’t get jobs if they find themselves on the teachers’ naughty list. (Imagine the outcry if the school district colluded with other districts on such a list.)

At one arbitration hearing, the arbitrator declared that proctoring your own exam to your own class during your scheduled class time was a “non-teaching duty”.

Meanwhile, since the administration can’t fire any of the teachers, we have to beg and plead with them to do their jobs.

One-third of high school students regularly fail the HSPA Math exam. Not coincidentally, that’s the department where the teachers union president happens to work part-time for full-time pay.

The teachers labor contract specifically sets aside time for 30 hours of “professional meetings”. During one of those professional meetings, the high school math teachers were asked to review the HSPA Math test to review where we should tweak the curriculum to help the students.

The math teachers objected to reviewing the test data without additional pay. “Data analysis” wasn’t part of their job description.

Not only does the staff have a 7% absentee rate, sometimes they simply choose to take time off. We had one instance of an administrator who didn’t show up for work for months. When we demanded a doctor’s note, we got a letter saying she suffered from wrist pain.

On the Friday before Christmas, one-quarter of the staff regularly takes the day off.

One time, the union told the teachers to stop helping children off and on the bus until the district agreed to pay extra. Fortunately, that time the teachers openly rejected their union’s demands.

The district spent thousands of dollars training teachers to post their information on the school website but only a minority of teachers have done so.

Meanwhile, the district receives numerous complaints from district teachers upset by their union’s actions but they have no choice. By law, the teacher must belong to the union. By law, the teacher’s salary must be confiscated to support the union.

In Matawa-Aberdeen, the district pays the union about $1,000 per union member that otherwise would have gone to the employees. The union then uses a large portion of that money towards “advocacy”, i.e. political campaigns.

It wasn’t lost on any of the board members when Marty Ruprecht sat across the negotiating table from the guy who recently spent thousands of dollars helping Marty get elected. (To Ruprecht’s credit, he never gave the union any special consideration. It’s also funny to note that the teachers union campaign to oust Ken Aitken set in motion a chain of events that led to the destruction of Barza.)

We had teachers who were so bad we had to shift them into special programs to limit their exposure to students. But when the budget cuts came, we had to save the bad teachers and fire the good ones.

Then there was the occasional story of the teachers lining up by the school entrances in a show of force to send a message to the parents – We have your children.

Then there are the teachers who do terrible jobs but think they’re doing fantastic. On these pages, one teacher (CB) publicly proclaimed that he was proud of his record and challenged me to hold him accountable. The guy teaches an enrichment class to some of the best students in the grade and still a majority of his class scored below 70% on the standardized exams. But he, the proud teacher who once did me the honor of reading my blog aloud at a public meeting, is boasting that most of his kids scored above 50%. Talk about your low standards.

The overwhelming majority of teachers are good people who want to do the right thing. But teachers shouldn’t be surprised when the public judges them by the actions of “union thugs” the teachers elected to represent them. And they shouldn't be surprised when board members are forced to act in the best interests of the people they represent. >>> Read more!

Making Goals Mean Something

About a year and a half ago, the Matawan-Aberdeen school board had agreed upon three goals:

• Grade level reading/writing proficiency for all students
• Among a pre-selected group of twenty-five school districts, ours rank among the top fifteen on all state assessment exams
• The district would not raise taxes above 2% in any year

Since that time, we haven’t heard much, if any, discussion related to those three goals. That’s a mistake. Like the mission/vision statement, those goals should be a constant focus of the school board.

In the meantime, how are we doing?

Reading/Writing Proficiency
I think it’s a mistake to use the state exam as a standard. Proficiency should not be defined as knowing half the material nor should we rely upon the state to set consistent standards.

Still, considering the resources being used to train our students to pass the state exams (curriculum rewrites, professional training, consultants, etc.), it’s certainly fair to ask how we did.

Here are the results. Don’t get too excited by the 11th grade LAL. The state dumbed down the exam resulting in a big jump across the state. That’s why school ranking is a better indicator of performance than year-over-year score improvement.

	09-10	08-09	Change
3rd LAL TP	78.4	70	8.4
4th LAL TP	64.8	69.2	-4.4
5th LAL TP	65.5	69.2	-3.7
6th LAL TP	73.5	74.3	-0.8
7th LAL TP	77.1	77.8	-0.7
8th LAL TP	88.9	89.2	-0.3
11th LAL TP	90.5	86.9	3.6

Top 15 Ranking
The school board selected 25 districts in the GH district factor group (one above Matawan-Aberdeen) and set a goal to rank among the top 15 in both total proficiency and advanced proficiency for each state exam.

Click here for the full report on the Top 15 ranking.

As seen in the chart below, Matawan-Aberdeen’s Top 15 ranking increased from 8 to 12 categories out of 32, including all 3rd grade categories. On the downside, the district finished dead last in 11th grade math. More on that to come.

	Rank	Percent	Goal	Above/Below	1-Yr Change
3rd LAL AP	19	7.6	7.6	0.00	2.6
3rd LAL TP	3	78.4	68.9	9.50	10.1
3rd Math AP	13	53.2	47.2	6.00	3.8
3rd Math TP	9	90.7	88.1	2.60	0.2
4th LAL AP	11	12.1	12.1	0.00	3.3
4th LAL TP	18	64.8	71.7	-6.90	-9.2
4th Math AP	14	39.8	42.7	-2.90	-3
4th Math TP	15	81.5	86.5	-5.00	-6
4th Sci AP	18	53	51.6	1.40	3.6
4th Sci TP	23	95	96.9	-1.90	-1.3
5th LAL AP	19	8.9	10.9	-2.00	4.7
5th LAL TP	25	65.5	71.6	-6.10	-4.6
5th Math AP	18	48.7	44.6	4.10	7.4
5th Math TP	19	83.6	87	-3.40	-0.4
6th LAL AP	18	8.7	9.4	-0.70	5.3
6th LAL TP	22	73.5	76.2	-2.70	-1.5
6th Math AP	18	30.9	28.8	2.10	5.5
6th Math TP	20	81.9	79.7	2.20	3.2
7th LAL AP	23	19.4	21.1	-1.70	3.6
7th LAL TP	22	77.1	77.9	-0.80	2.6
7th Math AP	9	34.3	28.3	6.00	7
7th Math TP	17	78.7	74.8	3.90	-2.6
8th LAL AP	19	21.8	24	-2.20	-1.6
8th LAL TP	18	88.9	90.9	-2.00	-0.6
8th Math AP	8	41.9	36.7	5.20	2.5
8th Math TP	9	77.5	78.7	-1.20	-5.2
8th Sci AP	25	34.1	39.8	-5.70	-5.5
8th Sci TP	16	89.5	90.9	-1.40	9.3
11th LAL AP	21	19.9	22.3	-2.40	2.1
11th LAL TP	21	90.5	93.6	-3.10	1.2
11th Math AP	26	16	25.9	-9.90	-0.9
11th Math TP	24	67.1	81.3	-14.20	-3.2

Tax Increase of 2% or Less
Given the state’s newly mandated 2% cap on school budget tax increases, this goal doesn’t sound as impressive as it did when first passed. Unfortunately, the district has used newfound state funding to avoid the aggressive cost cutting still needed for taxpayer relief.

Although the proposed tax hike is only 1.69%, at $61.8 million the proposed budget will increase spending 4% during a recession.

We can save over half a million dollars from outsourcing personnel (bus drivers, secretaries, guidance counselors, child study teams, teacher aides, etc.) and another half million by cutting extraneous personnel.

Let’s make sure the 2% is a cap and not a target. More can be cut.

The board set goals. Let’s make those goals mean something. >>> Read more!

Resetting the Comments Policy

This site has an established tradition of being extremely liberal in its comments policy. That now has to change. The vulgarity being regularly posted has crowded out all civil discourse, making it difficult, if not impossible, to have an intelligent discussion of the issues.

Therefore, I am lowering the bar for comment exclusion. Any comment that includes inappropriate language or innuendo may be deleted at my discretion.

I have confidence that posters will be able to fully express themselves without resorting to the same language they would forbid their children from using. >>> Read more!

The Fallacy of Guaranteed Pensions

"Don’t place your trust in princes" - Psalms 146

When the Bernie Madoff story first broke, the public was incredulous that one man could steal so much. Then, as details emerged, the public was incredulous that otherwise intelligent people could be so stupid when it came to their lifesavings. How could anyone believe a financial guru who claims to deliver consistent returns regardless of market conditions?

Well, I could think of a whole bunch of people who act just like that. Specifically, the public sector unions. Public union workers spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to elect political halfwits who know nothing about finance but promise lavish retirement benefits to be delivered long after their terms expire. Then, for reasons unknown, these government employees, who should know better than anyone, plan their entire retirement around these empty promises from unaccountable politicians long gone.

Here’s the list of former Aberdeen employees earning a government “guaranteed” pension. The dollar amounts don’t include health benefits, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other program.

Here are some quick tidbits –

• In the Matawan-Aberdeen school district, for every dollar of salary going to a school employee, the state is spending 40 cents for a district retiree
• Including Aberdeen’s portion of the school district and library, the state will spend over $10 million dollars in pension payments this year. That compares to a $15 million municipal budget and $9 million municipal tax levy
• In addition to the pension payments, for every 5 school district employees on the state healthcare plan, so are 4 district retirees

Ah, you say, we don’t have to worry about that because the state manages a pension fund.

Well, about that fund.

Pension funds are supposed to work as follows – Each year they get a little larger so that the investment income earned is enough to cover payouts without endangering the principal. Unfortunately, the state pension plans are designed to fail for several reasons.

Using the Teachers Pension and Annuity Fund as an example, consider the following –

• Pensions are based upon salaries, which, over the past decade, have risen far faster than inflation or the market
• In the drive for smaller class sizes and one-on-one instruction, more teachers means more pension liabilities
• When the market's down, the fund has to sell assets on the cheap to fund benefits, meaning the fund gets smaller and goes into a death spiral as it will never earn enough to payout benefits
  
• Pension managers are pushed to assume higher levels of risk to meet the state's unrealistic projections
  

In 2000-01, the TPAF paid out $1.33 billion in benefits. In 2009-10, the payout was $3.08 billion, a 230% increase in just nine years.

During that same time period, the fund itself has shrunk from $31.05 billion to $25.89 billion. In other words, over a nine-year period, the ratio of assets to one-year payouts, has dropped from 23.35 to 8.41.

The dramatic fall in pension assets occurred despite a sharp rise in pension contributions, an increase from $371.6 million in 2000-01 to $658.8 million in 2009-2010.

As the chart below shows (all numbers in billions), even assuming rosy projections, as the state likes to do, that contributions will increase 8% a year, net return on investments will consistently run a little over 5% a year, and pension liabilities, in contrast to history and common sense, will only increase 4% a year, the Teachers Annuity and Pension Fund will go bankrupt in under 15 years.

Year	Withdrawal	Contribution	Assets
2010	3.08	0.66	25.89
2011	3.2032	0.7128	24.6941
2012	3.331328	0.769824	23.3673
2013	3.464581	0.83141	21.90249
2014	3.603164	0.897923	20.29238
2015	3.747291	0.969757	18.52946
2016	3.897183	1.047337	16.60609
2017	4.05307	1.131124	14.51445
2018	4.215193	1.221614	12.24659
2019	4.3838	1.319343	9.794465
2020	4.559152	1.42489	7.149926
2021	4.741518	1.538882	4.304786
2022	4.931179	1.661992	1.250838
2023	5.128426	1.794952	-2.0201
2024	5.333563	1.938548	-5.51612
2025	5.546906	2.093632	-9.2452

The unions’ response will be to declare unfunded pensions and health benefits are the state’s problem and the state must fix it. In other words, the unions will turn to the very political process that put them in the whole in the first place. Imagine what will happen if they get their wish. >>> Read more!

Unwanted Development

Well, we all saw this coming, at least everybody but the developer, our “dear leaders” on the town council, and their political hacks on Aberdeen’s planning board and zoning board. Six years after being built, the Cambridge Park development remains over three-quarters empty. The one sale went to a Californian transplant whose employer fronted half the mortgage.

The developer continues to “update” the year built – now showing 2009 – and maintain the properties, but no amount of window dressing will hide the plain fact that the lots are too small. The house at 75 Cambridge practically touches its property borders on all sides. The other homes lack fences and decks to maximize their puny yards.

The four houses plus the undeveloped lot in the back provide the town an annual windfall of $50,000. But those short-term gains will soon become long-term losses.

Tax sale certificates, totaling over $30,000, have been sold against the three vacant houses indicating the developer may be struggling to maintain the properties. If so, the homes will be forced down to market prices. Once occupied, even an average of one public school child per house will cost the district over $5,000 per house. At two children per house, the development would lose the town $75,000 a year.

Of course, by the town council’s calculation, even if each house was home to a dozen kids, the municipal tax rate would still drop from the additional ratables and the inevitable school tax hikes would be blamed on someone else.

Meanwhile, the neighbors can’t be too pleased with an oversized empty development. Which brings us back to the original point – What was the town council thinking? >>> Read more!