Striking Capistrano Unified School District teachers were ballyhooing today in south Orange County during my drive to Trader Joe’s this afternoon to pick up some chow for Ibo, our real German, German Shepherd.

     The strikers looked neighborly enough, almost like a mall crowd, mostly changed into "smart casual" outfits after school for their afternoon of demonstrating.  I got to thinking, and contacted Tony Beall, the Rancho Santa Margarita Councilman who has been defending the CUSD "reform" trustees in the labor dispute that pits a school administration that absolutely must control excessive spending and a teacher’s union that will not easily accept that their salaries need to be cut to do so.

     Anyway, Tony provided me some URLs leading me to some data I was interested in seeing.  I am not a statistician, but what I learned all on my own is that last year, around half of the teachers at CUSD made salaries of $82,245 or more.  Since salaries start at around $48,000, and go to a little under $100,000, the labor problem at CUSD seemed pretty evident to me: the district is top-heavy with high salaried teachers.  One obvious way to reduce labor costs would be to simply start cutting out those high-paying jobs.  Dollar for dollar, cutting out the high-paying jobs would mean fewer employees would need to be cut to get the budget under control.  And it would give younger teachers with fresher ideas in the lower paying entry level positions a chance to advance and have more responsibility. The reform trustees however are pointing to temporary across-the-board cuts: cuts that spread the pain but don’t result in firings.  The union doesn’t like either approach.

     I think if the teacher’s union won’t negotiate, the trustees will have little option left other than to get out a meat-cleaver and start chopping out the highly paid teachers.  Years of mismanagement at CUSD have set the stage for where the district is today.  In the midst of a recession, where the unemployment rate is at a record high, where once flourishing businesses, especially auto dealerships, have been shuttered right next to the district’ headquarters, where families have lost homes, and where high school students in CUSD continue to go to class in temporary trailers that do not meet city building code safety standards, it just seems a little selfish for a $100,000 a year teacher wearing Old Navy, with life-time job security, to be waiving a picket sign at everybody else driving by, including, I am sure, a lot of less fortunate people who wish they were that well off.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.