Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com

Published - Thursday, October 18, 2007

Teachers’ pay is the bulk of education budget

By Jim Galewski | Just Jim

I’ve lost track of the number of politicians who have campaigned on education. How many times have we heard that we need to adequately fund education? If you don’t support education, you are almost un-American. When we spend money on education, most of our education dollars go to teachers’ salaries.

If you add the support staff and administration, 85 percent of the Winona School district’s budget goes to employee salaries or benefits. This week, the teachers’ union representatives called for a state mediator to help settle the contract.

The district has a deadline. It must have its union negotiations settled by Jan. 15, 2008, or lose six figures in state aid. When the deadline looms, the advantage goes to the union.

The biggest stumbling block appears to be Q-Comp. That’s a very obscure phrase, but it stands for “Quality Compensation for Teachers.” It bases raises on teachers’ work and student performance instead of the traditional grid, which gives raises based on seniority and schooling.

According to Christine Dufour of the Minnesota Department of Education, the five components of Q-Comp include:

- Career advancement options for teachers: Allows teachers to take on additional responsibilities and positions.

- Integrated professional development: This component requires schools to deliver integrated professional development for teachers.

- Teacher evaluations: Multiple teacher evaluations are required. The MDE requires local plans to use multiple teacher evaluations with more than one evaluator.

- Performance pay: The law requires that at least 60 percent of teacher compensation increases include performance indicators.

- Alternative teacher salary schedule: The school district and teachers must negotiate a new salary schedule that “reforms” the steps and lanes salary schedule. No teacher would receive a pay reduction in this transition.

That means teachers would be paid by performance. Now they are paid by how long they’ve worked and how many educational credits they’ve collected during the summer.

I can see where the teachers would run for cover with that threat. It’s how the rest of the world is evaluated.

Currently, a teacher who has earned tenure doesn’t have to worry about performance. Q-Comp is supposed to be voluntary and if the union would accept the new way of compensating teachers, the district could be rewarded with as much as $1 million in new state funding.

The district’s offer would cost an additional $2.6 million. That’s not acceptable to teachers. The teachers didn’t even counter the district’s offer. In their defense, negotiations have lost that element of trust. That’s obvious from the conflicting stories each side tells. At present, the teachers look like the bad guys.

To balk at a pay structure that pays teachers by performance tells me that they have a pretty sweet deal now. It also means they don’t trust the process.

This news doesn’t improve the public educational picture in Winona. Teachers will have a hard time defending why they don’t want to be paid by performance and why they rushed into mediation without giving the district — and the public — a counter offer. The school administrators will have to explain why the teachers feel they can’t trust their bosses.

In this whole mess rests the collateral damage — the children. As we bicker over wages and how we pay teachers, let’s not forget why we have educators.

Teachers and staff deserve to be paid fairly, but more importantly, teachers need to inspire their students. If that happens, a teacher is performing well. Why would we want a teacher who values a bulletproof contract over the achievement of the students?

The anatomy of a parking lot

Sometime in the last 20 years, demolishing a building got a lot more complicated. The Lincoln School demolition has gone on for three weeks.

I live just a block from the old school, and I hear the destruction during the day. Two things strike me about the project — the contractor is breaking the building up into very small pieces, and the workers are taking out as much metal as possible.

Strupp Trucking Inc., of La Crosse, Wis., is doing the work for $139,150. The company’s contract with Winona State University gives the bidder responsibility to remove the building and foundation and make the city block ready for a parking lot. That means a crushed rock surface by Oct. 31. A new parking lot will be built next year.

The concrete, block and brick was hauled to La Crosse and crushed into road base. According to Pat Strupp, vice president of Strupp Trucking, the metal in the building — including a fairly new elevator — was sold for scrap iron.

Jim Galewski is the retired editor and Opinion page editor of the Winona Daily News. His views don’t necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper. If you have an idea or tip about a Winona issue, call Jim at (507) 452-3960. His e-mail is editor@luminet.net.