The Observation Deck

Gary Rice wrote:"Wrapping yourself in the robe of obfuscation, procedures, bureaucracy, and hidden back room contract negotiations doesn't endear you to the general public right now."

I did WHAT?

Presumably, the person who wrote the above lines is referring to teachers collectively and not to me personally, but I'm not really sure at this point....

Haha, yes I could have probably phrased that better in my post. Definitely didn't mean you personally.

Bryan, I don't want to twist your words at all I'm just trying to understand the 15% health insurance contribution and merit pay proposal that you have mentioned several times.

I know these things, along with other things, are part of sb5. I have read the whole thread but it is 11 pages long now and I'm not going to reread it right now.

I guess my point would be that sb5 is so tainted now it can't be amended to just include the things that don't take away collective bargaining. I would not want to cloud the issue with making changes. So, is that what you mean or do you mean something else?

I support several changes to the contract that I think is fair and necessary. I think the problem is that you're equating that with supporting SB5 and that's the case.

You can easily feel that the current contract is unsustainable, unfair, and doesn't include enough accountability without supporting SB5.

If you really want to know my full position, I've laid it out throughout the thread.

Bryan, are you just supporting those changes for Lakewood or statewide?

Again, I have read the whole thread but it is quite difficult to tie bits and pieces together and then assign the right parts to the right people. I have a good memory but not that good.

I guess what I believe the right position to take is to not support anything in sb5 at all at this time. Sb5 is a political power grab and that taints everything in it. There may be things in it that have merit but the choices made by those who proposed this bill have negated that debate. A debate that mightve had merit but they decided to do things this way and those things with possible merit can no longer be debated in the context of this bill.

Do you see what I mean by this? I think it is an important distinction on grounds of principle.

Well, one thing seems pretty certain to me...

There have been thirteen very concerned people commenting on this thread since it began, a month (almost to the day) ago.

We've had nearly two thousand "observations" of this conversation during that time.

There's obviously a great deal of interest in this topic.

In a way, this 'Deck is also like a living history book, with a new page being written every day.

I'm not sure if anyone's positions have been changed, but I do believe that those positions have been clarified, and the "lines in the sand" that have been drawn out nationally can very much be seen here.

I do believe that, at least locally, we are very fortunate to have the kinds of schools, municipal and public safety and maintenance programs that the City of Lakewood has, as well as the leadership that we presently have on many sides of this discussion.

It will remain to be seen how all of this plays out on the national stage. Already, several other states are facing huge adversarial situations that could potentially drain much of the limited resources that they presently have. The public appears to be outraged at the notion of ongoing confrontational politics, rather than attempts to compromise, but one could easily compare these situations with the decades-old Congressional gridlock situation, so this is all probably not a new problem. The thing is, I do believe that most all of this grief ends up coming out of your pocket, and mine, so we do have a vested interest in at least attempting to get our elected leadership back on track.

Remember the old days, when we only thought about politics every few years?

All just my opinion here...Glad I'm still able to express one, at least.

Back to the banjo.. summertime sing-a-long's coming soon!

(Now where were those chocolate bars and marshmallows?)

Ellen Cormier wrote:Bryan, are you just supporting those changes for Lakewood or statewide?

Depends on what you're asking about. I can't speak to things state-wide related to budgets since I don't know every municipal or school district budget.

So I'll say for Lakewood, I think there needs to be some budgetary concessions on the side of the teachers related to health-care and retirement funding for the long-term health of the school system. We've already cut a lot of fat, and we're going to need to try and find some more since we have another deficit to to overcome because of the cut in funding.

Our property taxes are already too high here, we're going to have to increase them again for the Phase III building project, I don't think it's fair to the taxpayers to be asked in the future for another levy to simply continue to pay full health and retirement costs while they cut programs and increase class size to balance the budget. I want to see concessions in the contract before I'll vote for another operating levy.

Outside of that, I would love to see teacher's nationally held accountable for being measure on performance. I won't pretend to know the answer to how to do that, there are much smarter people than me, but it can be done. Why should anyone get automatic raises or raises on the assumption that because you have more education you automatically are better than someone else? Look at how the teacher's perform, look at how they create results. Evaluate on that.

Again, I have read the whole thread but it is quite difficult to tie bits and pieces together and then assign the right parts to the right people. I have a good memory but not that good.

I think that's part of the problem. If you read the entire thread, you'll understand that it has veered off from being really about SB5 and more about some of the ideas that SB5 created in the discussion. You seem to be equating anything anyone says that is contrary to what you think as implicit support of SB5, but that's not the case nor is SB5 even what the bulk of the discussion about any longer.

A debate that mightve had merit but they decided to do things this way and those things with possible merit can no longer be debated in the context of this bill.

Do you see what I mean by this? I think it is an important distinction on grounds of principle.

I can appreciate the way you feel, but that's not the reality of this particular discussion. You need to realize that we are not solely focused on SB5 in this thread.

I do agree the thread has wandered off sb5. I joined the discussion because I thought sb5 was a political sham and has deep implications to the state of the middle class and our direction as a state in general.

That said there are a lot of things surrounding sb5 I think should be discussed too. I think in the nature of a discussion board it pays to be as clear as possible. However, that is not always an easy task. Perhaps another thread should be started on ideas to help fix the schools in the wake of sb5?

I am surprised more teachers or retired teachers aren't getting involved in the discussion. Sb5 has not passed yet and lots can still be done to keep it from happening. There have been lots of demonstrations all over the state but I don't think there has been anything done in Lakewood yet to show our support for our teachers. I am not sure what the best way to instigate that would be. I work on the other side of town and I'm not heavily involved in any community groups due to a lack of time. Anyone have ideas on a community action to support our teachers through this?

Teachers in their positions may have difficulty speaking out and defending themselves for fear of different types of consequences. I think our Ohio politeness and wanting to go with the flow and staying out of other peoples business can be to our detriment. Our situation is a little different than Wisconsin but we are a lot bigger than Wisconsin. It's also hard to gauge all that people are doing. Does the state report the number of phone calls and emails it has received on sb5? I'd like to know the answer to that question.

Ellen Cormier wrote:I am surprised more teachers or retired teachers aren't getting involved in the discussion. Sb5 has not passed yet and lots can still be done to keep it from happening. There have been lots of demonstrations all over the state but I don't think there has been anything done in Lakewood yet to show our support for our teachers.

They are not taking part because they know discussions like this don't have any affect on policy and will have no affect on the behaviour of the school board. The LTA has a cozy relationship with the board and they know nothing that is said here will change that.

In Wisconsin the government unions are insisting they will not pay 5% of their health care costs and want to continue to pay nothing into their retirement fund. If you ask them to do that they threaten to kill you and your family and call you a Nazi. Is that what you want here?

Government pensions are underfunded by trillions of dollars. Where will they money come from?

I'm still waiting for that entrepreneur.

Bill, I knew you were going to say that!

Anyway, it looks like they're going to vote on sb5 tomorrow. It's going to be intersting in Columbus.

As I'm sure everyone knows our governor has signed sb5 into law. I don't think this is the end of the discussion at all.

We have 90 days to collect about 230,000 signatures statewide.

Ellen Cormier wrote:Bill, I knew you were going to say that!

Anyway, it looks like they're going to vote on sb5 tomorrow. It's going to be intersting in Columbus.

Who me, predictable!

Perhaps we can agree on an 8 hour work day, properly supervised and supported.