Neshaminy: Now WE Want a School Board Just Like Morrisville

From the BCCT.

First Pennsbury, now Neshaminy...

"Vote on May 19 for candidates who support taxpayers." What ever happened to the children in this equation? Take this fight to Harrisburg. Stop making the children pay alongside the rest of us. Call your state senator and representative.

Contracts made when times were better are going to look lavish when compared to today. Similarly, they would look shabby against a healthy economy.

Personnel costs are an immense cost in every business, not just teaching. But teaching is a very high "face time" profession, requiring 1 on 25 group interaction (pick your teacher to class ratio as you will), and the necessary 1 on 1 interactions. No computer program in existence today can replace the teacher-student time.

Teachers are well educated people and they deserve a real salary based on their past experience, their current workload, and the night education they are receiving to become better at their job. Do not read that to mean I stand for unlimited and excessive pay. I've signed payrolls in the past. Fair pay for fair work, but remember that one man's fair is another's foul.

Another local school board, another local taxpayer riot. Been there, done that. Our wreckage is still bouncing from the collapse, and the occasional heater explosion.

Are you sure you want to go down this extremist road?

Tell irresponsible unions, school boards our pockets are empty

The moment of truth is approaching. This was announced at the Neshaminy board meeting when Joe Paradise, the school district’s business manager, stated, “The preliminary budget will be out April 28 and there will be something for everyone to hate in this budget.” As the guardian of spending no one understands the tyranny of the numbers better.

When he says “everyone,” I have more than a suspicion that he means every one of us taxpayers will yet again shoulder the pain caused by past and current failures in fiscal responsibility.

However, taxpayers need to understand the reason our budget is so painful. Escalating personnel costs in our district now comprise nearly 80 percent of the expense. This is predominately unionized personnel, aka teachers and staff. Their excessive past contracts, including rich benefits, have put us in a $14 million deficit and this will likely be severely exasperated by the outrageous demands in the next contract.

Read every page of the last collective bargaining agreement (an extension of the 1998 contract) from 2002 and you will see contracted pay, benefits and perks that will absolutely drive you crazy — especially now. Amazingly, in the ongoing renegotiation, the most highly compensated teachers and staff in Bucks County (top 10 in Pennsylvania), now are demanding much more.

When he says “something,” we ALL will hate, it is code for the draconian cuts the board will be forced to make to close the budget gaps resulting from the elephant in the room — out of control employee costs. The teachers rejected a perfectly decent offer the board made last year and one the administrators recently accepted. This included a generous 3 percent annual increase and a diminished yet still rich benefits package. They should have grabbed it since now, given the deteriorating economy, this package is now even more unaffordable for the district.

The National Federation of Teachers and its members didn’t compromise, but instead insisted on demanding a 4 percent increase plus steps totaling 6 percent annually, zero employee contribution to the exponentially increasing budget health care costs, continued defined benefit retirement plan, including full non-participatory health care in retirement, retirement bonuses of $30,000 vs. the current $27,000 (who gets this in the real world?), a longevity bonus (WHAT? You have to be kidding?) and many other benefits that no other Pennsylvania district still provides.

Just think, if the offer the board made is unaffordable, what if they now get a compromised middle ground deal or worse, their demands? You won’t be able to cut enough elsewhere and we will be in deeper deficit spending and escalating annual tax increases as far as the eye can see.

A petition circulating in the district on behalf of taxpayers for a Fair Neshaminy Budget, so far signed by several hundred taxpayers and growing, has demanded the board withdraw its offer and make a significantly reduced one with much lower long-term cost to taxpayers. Many more are speaking up at school board meetings.

When the board recommends cuts in programs that will negatively impact the children of the district (remember them?), don’t direct all your displeasure at board members. Their hands have been tied by unions and lawmakers so they do what state laws permit. Instead, focus blame on the teachers and union leaders. The possible reduction in educational quality will now rest with them as they make their needs preeminent to ours.

Many are uncomfortable that these facts are being called out publicly, but unfortunately this powerful group has brought it on themselves as they simply have no defense of the demands. Please know that if the union wins, everyone else loses. It will lead not only to continued massive tax increases, but also to potentially major reductions in very popular programs. Ironically, to secure their demands, union leadership will throw some teachers over the side due to program elimination.

I don’t know about you, but I have had it with irresponsible unions, school boards and politicians who assume our pockets are deep enough to pay all the bills they sign up for? People continue to fatten up at the public trough when the rest of us can now least afford it. Fair compensation in line with current private sector offerings is acceptable but communities should no longer have to subsidize the excessive packages that teachers and other public workers demand through their powerful unions. If the madness doesn’t stop, our children and grandchildren will be left with the increasingly noncompetitive public education system we have now — and taxes that make Europe look like a bargain.

Join the fight. Speak at tonight’s board meeting. Vote on May 19 for candidates who support taxpayers.