Monday, April 11, 2011

Get Rid of Step Increases in New Saugerties & Kingston Teacher Contracts

If Saugerties and Kingston School Boards are negotiating new teacher's contracts, they are not required to include step increases for longevity and coursework in the contract (it is a local issue). However, once the step increases are included in a contract, the teachers continue to get the step increases while negotiating the next contract.  The moral of this story for the Saugerties & Kingston School Boards is "DO NOT INCLUDE STEP INCREASES" in the new contracts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This will be very difficult with the Taylor Law. Any givebacks will be allmost impossible unless the district is willing to do layoffs on a large scale as an incentave to change the contracts. It has been my experience dealing with public unions the current contract is the baseline unless you can show that the ramifications would mean massive layoffs. Good luck with this.

Ralph Mitchell said...

To 11:45am,
Most of our school districts are at the brink of destruction with more layoffs each year into the future. Most of the local school boards and teacher's unions are behaving like those on the Titanic. They are acting as though nothing is wrong and that good economic times will allow raises and business as usual. It is really sad to observe this total lack of reality, lack of courage and lack of leadership. The Taylor law's Triborough Amendment is designed for cyclic bad times followed by good times.
Since the State and Federal Governments are broke and cannot come to the rescue of our failing public schools, the NYS Triborough Amendment which always gives the teacher's unions the upper hand with raises, benefits and pensions will cause the continued layoffs are destruction of our school districts. Do I hear the footsteps of the approaching school competition and school voucher movement?