Neenah School District vs. Kenosha School District

Two big stories came to light earlier this week involving school district budgets for next year, one for the Neenah School District and the other for Kenosha School District. As reported, one is hiring five additional teachers and the other is letting go 250 total staff members.  Why the big difference? Let’s take a look…….

NEENAH SCHOOL DISTRICT

Neenah school board member John Lehman claims that laws enacted last year, when Gov. Scott Walker took away almost all collective bargaining powers from most public unions, changed the outlook for balancing their school budget. Lehman went on to say, “I know we’re going to balance the budget, and we’re going to be able to do that without decreasing 10 or 15 staff,”  “We’re going to add five. To me, the most important thing is having teachers in the classroom. That makes a difference every day.”

Governor Walker’s reforms surrounding collective bargaining have given school districts flexibility with their budgets. One of those changes allowed school districts to shop for the best healthcare coverage. Many school union contracts dictated which company provided its employee’s health insurance coverage (most of the time they had to use the WEA Trust, a union affiliated insurance). This prevented districts from shopping around to save costs. Introducing competition into the process through Governor Walker’s reforms means lower costs, sometimes even without changes to coverage, premiums and/or copays.

For example, following Governor Walker’s reforms, the Appleton School District put its policy up for bid. Due to competition, their current chosen carrier offered the same policy at a cost savings of more than $3 million. That extra money can support many teachers. Across the state, savings from health care provider and plan changes alone top $75 million so far this year.

KENOSHA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

The Kenosha Unified School District reported that it expects to cut more than 250 employees to help close a $28 million budget shortfall for next year. The district said Tuesday, April 10th, it expects 209 layoffs, 21 retirements and 23 jobs to be reduced through non-renewal of one-year appointments. Eight administrators and 13 secretaries will be eliminated.

The staffing reductions amount to $15 million. Another $10 million is expected to be saved by closing a middle school and reducing school operating budgets, among other things. Gary Vaillancourt, a school district official said.“The majority have been teachers, because that’s the largest portion of our workforce. Nearly everyone in the district will be impacted by these cuts, and class sizes will increase. It’s unfortunate, but there’s no way to get around that when you have to come up with the money to make up for that deficit.”

Kenosha Education Association Executive Director Joe Kiriaki has claimed that the lay-offs in Kenosha are a direct result of budget cuts by Governor Walker. However Kiriaki does not mention that there was a 90-day window starting last November when the district and the union could restructure their current contracts. It would have meant teachers contributed more to their insurance and pensions, which came out to saving the district $15 million. The union however, declined, which actually resulted in the layoffs. I am quite certain that these Kenosha School District employees would gladly pay a little more for their insurance and pensions now, than be faced with no job at all. It is clear that the union doesn’t care about the individual worker as they claim. Unions are going to continue to play hardball at the cost of the average worker and of course the students of these school districts are definitely left to suffer as well.

The facts are that the three districts with the most teacher layoffs in the state (Milwaukee, Kenosha, and Janesville) didn’t adopt the reforms put in place by Governor Walker. Those districts account for 68% of teacher layoffs for the entire state, but only contain 12.8% of Wisconsin students.

---