Unions and School Board to Blame for RUSD Woes

During the two past weeks, I have followed a subject near and dear to all of us with children, our school system.  Not just by listening to the talking points by both sides regarding the Wisconsin Emergency Budget Repair Bill and the upcoming three referendum questions, but by analyzing our own Racine Unified School District’s budget to see just how we could possibly come to a different conclusion than the ones presented by Governor Scott Walker and our local school board.  I’m not presenting this as an ambitious amateur, but as a former school board member (2005 – 2008), that sat on the Finance Committee for 2 of the three years, and Chaired the Legislative Committee for one.

So many on both sides are spouting out so much misinformation, that it is hard to really know what the truth is.  Don’t take me at my word.  Everything that I am about to layout can be found on the RUSD website, the Department of Public Instruction and Budget Repair Bill.

RUSD serves Racine, Caledonia, Mount Pleasant, Wind Point, Sturtevant, North Bay and Elmwood Park, with an enrollment of 21,051.  The staff includes 1,600 teachers, 110 administrators and approximately 800 support staff.  The total budget for 2010/2011 is $295 million, with about $80 million coming from the communities it serves, with the bulk of the rest coming from state shared revenue, 16% from federal the federal government, and the rest from district referendums.  Salaries and fringe benefits consume approximately 85% of the budget.  Fringe benefits, health insurance and pension, account for 40% of a teacher’s total compensation, with an average teacher salary of $52,000 and $38,000 in benefits.

With the numbers above, one can conclude that with 21,000 students and 1,600 teachers, one would think that the student to teacher ration should be 13.1 to 1, but in reality, that ratio is more like 32 to 1.  The teacher aide ratio is 25 to 1.

How does that happen?  Through collective bargaining negotiated by the school board and the unions, each teacher is given 180 minutes per week for class preparation out of the classroom, which means someone has to fill that class.  This equates district-wide to 4,800 hours of prep time, or an additional 128 teachers, full time, to fill this classroom time.  This one negotiated item costs the taxpayer $1.15 million.

The frustrating part of this is the taxpayer’s negotiator, the school board member, is beholden to the union by, in most cases, campaign donations and endorsements. A review of the last decade of school board candidates that have successfully been elected or re-elected, have been endorsed by the teacher’s union and have received financial contributions nine of ten times.

Clearly, this has at least the chance of being an unfair advantage to the unions.  They know it, count on it, and that is why any form of collective bargaining is not acceptable.  That is why they are marching in Madison.  Just think of that the next time you hear a union member or leader say they are losing their rights.  As a taxpayer, you already have lost yours’ years ago.  This is just one million dollar plus example.  I’ll tackle more in the coming days.