Schools
School District 622 Employees, Parents Give Board Their Thoughts on Proposed cuts
District employees spoke of the hardship a wage freeze would cause and parents spoke in support of all-day, everyday kindergarten.
A bus driver said a freeze on her $22,000 salary would make it tough to pay for food; a teacher talked about how her family has qualified for food vouchers; and parents said they would hate to see cuts to after-school programs or all-day, everyday kindergarten at a public hearing Tuesday about proposed cuts to School District 622’s budget for the 2011-12 school year.
Although administrators suggested $4 million in cuts, Superintendent Patty Phillips said she hopes none of them have to be made. “There is no easy option,” she said.
One option the district is looking at is freezing all staff salaries.
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Bus driver Trude Petersen, a single mom who lives in Oakdale, said even a raise of 20-30 cents an hour would be a big help to pay for food and gas.
“I don’t have the extra money for gas that is rising right now,” Petersen said. “I don’t have it, and I’ve got to take my son to basketball. … I want him to have that opportunity.”
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Petersen recommended that some of the top earners in the district take a pay cut in order to offset raises for people earning the lowest wages.
teacher Vicki Kapaun said many teachers are ultimately getting less pay than in past years because they got no raise last year, and a 1 percent bump this year, while at the same time contributions to insurance costs rose.
Kapaun also said that a few years ago, when her family decided that her husband would stay home with their two children, they qualified for WIC food vouchers, even though she had a master’s degree and eight years of teaching experience at the time. With no raise, a teacher with 12 years of experience, a master’s degree and young children would still qualify, she said.
“It is a shame that a person cannot support their family on a teacher’s wage alone without government support,” she said. “Just like children who cannot learn to the best of their ability when they are worried about where their next meal is coming from or any other unstable conditions at home, teachers and other district workers cannot concentrate fully on their jobs when they are worried about how they are going to pay the bills and support their families.”
Some parents who spoke said that teachers should share the pain in an all-around tough situation.
"We all are facing salary freezes due the poor economy,” why should teachers be different? asked parent Aneta Siadak, of Woodbury. “Especially because they’re not really doing all that great in effectiveness of their job.”
Siadak also spoke in favor of maintaining all-day, everyday kindergarten, as did other teachers and parents.
Parent Jill Seeley, of Woodbury, said the all-day, everyday kindergarten program is working and she sees a pay freeze as a stop-gap measure so the district can better plan for cuts.
“If you’re going to look at cutting the actual services that we provide to our students and to our community members and the impact that it has,” Seeley said, “don’t we owe it to our community and to our kids to have an alternate plan in place before we cut funding for something that is so vital as early childhood education?”
The school board did not respond to or discuss the opinions expressed at the hearing. The board is scheduled to vote March 22 on which cuts to make to reach the $4 million goal.