August 18, 2008

I asked questions and made comments concerning contract negotiations at the open school board meeting on Monday.
In all fairness, I will not attempt to speak for others and what their comments were that evening.
I sent my comments to our secretary but they did not make it into the minutes. You may read a condensed version of them below.

As of July 11, 2008, Illinois' chief executive officer, Gov. Blagojevich will take home $13,118 more, raising his salary to $184,035.
As a Jr. Senator for the state of Illinois-Barack Obama made $158,100 a year salary
As of January 1, 2008, the annual salary of Linda Chapa LaVia and each of 118 State Representative is $169,300.

These people represent and make decisions for 879 public school districts in IL consisting of over 3 million children under the age of 18.

Our school district has over 13,000 students. One superintendent.

Certain members of this board want our approval of a contract that pays our superintendent more than any of those state officials I have mentioned.

Dee & I have expressed concern, disapproval, disappointment and I personally am disgusted with the way this contract has been moved forward without any concern or consideration of input or discussion of ALL board members. Discussion and decisions seemed to have been made through emails and conversations with a few board members and the districts attorney.

The 100 highest-paid school administrators in Illinois in 2006 had salaries ranging from $205 to $380,000. There were 17 who made more than a quarter million dollars for that year: Guess what school district decide to pay their short term superintendent enough to make it # 14 on this list?

YEP! the same district who is cutting our children’s programs and wanting to increase pay and benefits to our present short term supt. How do we justify this, is the question I asked of this board from the podium a few years ago. I ask you again, how do you justify this attempt to approve a contract with all the added cash benefits, w/o having the last contract fulfilled and without significant indicators of marked improvements in our student scores or our budget?

I am opposed to the way this item was slid in on the Personnel report.
We have had no group decisions regarding salary, goal indicators or the changing of the terms of the last contract by implementing a new one-what the hell kind of "team" is this?

An article in the Christian Science Monitor in March of this year states:

An overly politicized school board, critics say, is often the problem where children's educational needs don't appear to be a priority.
The vote was 5-2 in favor of the contract.

To each his own

I thought the EA bloggers were on summer break, also.
I was away for 2 days. I return and find discussion has erupted.

In my estimation there has been some very healthy blogging going on. A little religion (if you don’t count the duplicate postings). A little politics, and various points of view. I LOVE IT!
One person and one opinion will not create change. Many people speaking up and out make it clear there is discontent in EA with our school district. Whether we choose to go to meetings, stand and protest, pray, blog , bitch, any or all of the above. Our common ground is our EA community. We all want what is best for our children, our schools and our neighborhoods. Change can and will happen. I assure you there are folks who read this blog that have the authority to help implement change. They may not acknowledge the communities concerns whether we express them at our city meetings, neighbor groups or at the board meetings. That does not mean we should sit down and feel that our opinion is less than valid.
That is why this blog was created to allow you to speak your mind. Tell us your thoughts. To borrow a line from an oldies tune, join the blog and “Express yourself!”