By Marsha Sutton
Hell hath no fury like a teachers union scorned – to paraphrase a famous line from the play “The Mourning Bride,” by late 17th-century English author William Congreve.
Judging by the number of objections from teachers, it seems my last column hit a raw nerve. Although my column primarily leveled criticism at the Del Mar Schools Education Foundation for employing what I characterized as bullying tactics aimed at Del Mar’s school board, apparently the ancillary issue of teacher prep time has occupied center stage these past two weeks and distracted the Del Mar Union School District’s teachers from the core issue of financing enrichment programs.
To explain the district’s reliance upon parent donations – and thus the Foundation – to support the salaries of enrichment teachers, I established the connection between the enrichment program and teacher prep time, which allows teachers to prepare for lessons while students take enrichment classes. Those classes include art, music, science, technology and P.E.
My point – that the district should never have made a contractual guarantee to the teachers for prep time during the school day without having some secure way to fund it – was lost on many teachers who chose to focus only on the possibility that I might have been suggesting that prep time is not beneficial.
So let me be clear: Prep time during the school day is a wonderful thing to have, if a district can afford it. But it’s not a God-given right. And saying this does not mean I don’t value Del Mar’s teachers, because I do – no matter how much some people would like to believe otherwise.
It’s important to separate myth from reality if those in a position to tackle Del Mar’s budgetary problems are to make any progress. Criticizing people for views they do not hold is not only deceptive and misleading, but it clouds the debate, making the search for sound solutions more difficult.
This method of argument – refuting claims that were never made – is specious at best, distorts my position and hinders honest discussions.
Del Mar’s quagmire of financial instability, and the prep-time/enrichment conundrum, is the 800-pound gorilla in the room – and is the “much-needed improvement” referred to in my previous column.
This may come as a shock to some, but I agree with Del Mar’s teachers on most issues they raise. We concur that –
- Teachers in Del Mar work very hard at their jobs and are dedicated to improving the quality of education for all the district’s children.
- The DMUSD is one of the highest achieving, top-ranked school districts in the state.
- Time for collaboration and preparation is very important.
- Better-prepared teachers mean higher-achieving students.
- Enrichment subjects like art, music, science, technology and P.E. enhance learning and are essential components in the education of a well-rounded child.
- The purpose of enrichment classes is not solely to occupy the students while classroom teachers engage in prep time.
- Having credentialed enrichment teachers offers significant benefits for kids.
I don’t even have any quarrel with the teachers union, whose mission is to take care of its members. Del Mar’s union leaders do exactly what they are supposed to do – negotiate for higher pay, improved benefits and better working conditions.
The only point where we disagree, it would seem, is with the prep time guarantee. Not the prep time itself, mind you – just the inclusion in the teachers’ contract of 120 to 180 minutes of prep time per week. That’s two to three hours each week during the school day for classroom teachers to prepare for lessons. This time does not include the early Wednesday afternoon release program, another bonus not even mentioned in my prior column.
All this time for preparation of lessons, planning and collaboration – and demanding that enrichment classes be taught only by certificated teachers – would be wonderful if the budget could support it. But for the district’s administration to approve such a prep-time promise – and to lock it in virtually forever by including it as a contractual obligation when there was never a secure way to fund the benefit – is fiscally reckless and shows an egregious lapse in fiduciary responsibility.
The prep time guarantee is estimated to cost the district $2,325,000 this coming year – for 31 enrichment teachers at about $75,000 each, a per-teacher dollar figure used regularly by the district for budgeting purposes.
The inclusion of this benefit in the labor contract many years ago was enthusiastically supported by former superintendent Tom Bishop, who endorsed and promoted the guarantee when there was no way to fully fund it except for parents to foot the bill.
These parents, many of whom are currently experiencing hard economic times, already see nearly half their property taxes given over to local schools. It is the height of arrogance to demand that these homeowners and parents pony up even more money.
At Bishop’s request, this system of private funding was approved by the previous school board. School boards have two primary functions – to hire and fire (and evaluate along the way) their superintendent, and to employ solid financial management procedures to ensure a fiscally solvent district.
In this case, the former DMUSD school board did neither.
Fiscal mismanagement allowed Bishop to offer this prep-time benefit without the dollars to back it up – a risky decision, the consequences of which we are witnessing today. And this new school board is left with the mess, forced to fix problems not of their own making and to make the hard decisions when there are few good options available.
Is it any wonder that many DMUSD teachers bemoan the loss of Bishop? He gave away the store to teachers without any way to pay for it, leaving taxpayers and parents holding the bag. How do we get that genie back in the bottle?
I stand by my characterization of this prep-time guarantee in the labor contract as a “juicy perk.” It is a benefit the district could not, and cannot today, afford. It was fiscally irresponsible. There was a startling lack of fiduciary oversight. And unless major change happens, it will soon become a monumental dollar drain. Best estimates suggest that the district has three years before reserves are depleted.
By all means, pay for prep time. It’s a worthy goal. If you can afford it, lovely. But if not, don’t promise it. Simple as that.
Other districts’ teachers, such as those in nearby Solana Beach, have prep time during students’ enrichment classes, the same as Del Mar. But the difference is that the prep time guarantee is not contract-bound, and most enrichment teachers are classified employees who extend classroom lessons effectively at lower pay.
If the Solana Beach School District suddenly suffered a drastic reduction in donations to its foundation, it would have the ability to modify or reduce enrichment programs as needed to ensure fiscal solvency. Del Mar, however, would be stuck.
Asking why one top-rated district operates quite differently than a neighboring top-rated district seems to me a legitimate question.
For every critic, there are five others who applaud a frank discussion of this issue – although most are too fearful to openly ask these hard questions, afraid as they are to be targeted with just the sort of baseless attacks we’ve seen here. The orchestrated backlash can be vicious, divisive and far-reaching.
But silencing people who are willing to talk about hidden issues and raise valid concerns is nothing more than a flagrant attempt to intimidate dissenters into submission.
Objectors may call solid research rumors, statistics hearsay, interviews irrelevant, experience extraneous, and fact fiction. But calling the truth a lie does not make it so. The problem is real, and denying its existence will not make it go away.
Caustic comments, defensive posturing, hurled insults and name-calling are approaches hardly conducive to productive dialogue. As we approach these problems, a healthy dose of civility would go a long way toward the promise of progress.
Although the topic is emotionally charged, striking a balance between what the teachers deserve and what the budget can sustain is a debate we can no longer afford to delay.
Instead of condemning a community newspaper for exposing issues that need to see the light of day, let’s encourage all the district’s stakeholders to use this opening as a starting point to discuss the real problems at hand and find workable solutions that both value our deserving teachers and secure the school district’s financial stability well into the future. Our children deserve no less.
How Solana Beach does it
A recent interview with seasoned education leader Leslie Fausset, superintendent of the Solana Beach School District, offers insight into the art, music, science, technology and physical education enrichment program in her district. Excerpts follow.
Q: How are you able to offer enrichment programs without using all certificated teachers?
For our program I believe that we are within the legal requirements of the law. That is, our enrichment is pure enrichment. It is extension beyond what our classroom teachers do in the classroom. It’s not core instruction.
For example, in science, our teachers are teaching science in the regular classroom and our enrichment science is really experiential; [it’s an] opportunity for kids that they wouldn’t get in a classroom setting.
What we’re really trying to do is to make our enrichment activities more closely tied to core and make them experiences that link and align to the instruction that our kids are getting in the classroom. All of our programs, everything is over and above classroom instruction.
Q: Music teachers are credentialed though?
We do have credentialed teachers in music. Music has been a long-time commitment in this district. And while it’s been cut and kind of reshaped, there’s been a commitment from the board to maintain it. I think that music is only taught by our music teachers, and I don’t believe we do very much music in the regular classroom.
Q: That means that in your regular classroom, your classroom teachers are teaching some science, some technology, some art and some P.E.?
The answer to that is yes. [For example,] we actually bought a P.E. curriculum this year that is state-adopted and standards-aligned. We bought a K-6 curriculum. So our teachers are teaching P.E., yes. And then our P.E. instructors actually work with our certificated [teachers] to construct activities.
In technology, we also have a teacher on special assignment who’s released full-time to work with not only classroom teachers but to work with our technology folks.
Q: How do you respond to people who say that’s an inadequate way to teach enrichment classes? Do you feel your students are suffering because they aren’t all certificated teachers?
I don’t think our children are suffering. Most of our enrichment instructors are certificated, as it turns out. This is a high-paid instructional aide salary, and most of our teachers do come with certification. They’re not paid as teachers, but they are trained teachers. They’re not hired as teachers. They are hired as instructional aide IIIs, but they are certificated teachers. But it’s not a requirement for the position, not at all.
I think the biggest challenge we face in all honesty is that we probably don’t have stability in staff because people are looking for another job. So it’s the instability of staff that would be our biggest challenge, I think.
Q: Do you feel your students are not getting what they should be getting if you had the money to pay for all certificated teachers in those enrichment classes?
That’s really hard for me to answer, because we’re working very hard to link and align it to classroom instruction. We’re trying to make sure that the enrichment experiences that our students have tie to their classroom instruction so it’s meaningful for them. I think if we invested in certificated teachers, we would have greater stability of staff, and I think that would be beneficial for us.
But I also want to be careful to say that we have some long-term people who have been teaching in this enrichment program who are not certificated teachers who do a phenomenal job. And I don’t want to minimize them or the great contributions that they’ve made.
Q: What is prohibiting Solana Beach from hiring all certificated teachers for enrichment classes?
It’s a budget issue. We are dependent upon our foundation for this enrichment program. We wouldn’t have it without the foundation. It would cost considerably more if we had certificated teachers.
