Final Contracts

It was helpful to look at a final contract presented by the speakers today. The advice on what to include and what to avoid in contracts were valuable to me as a future Superintendent. In particular, the contract language that might lead to greivances and how to avoid that language in contracts. The inclusion of the section that was tied to the past history of the district showed how school contracts can evolve into burdensome contracts to manage. It also made me wonder how hard it would be to eliminate the cumbersome language in future contracts. I imagine it would be difficult to get rid of language reflecting that past history as a new administrator coming in.

As far as the final simulation activities, yesterday when I left, I thought the meeting today would be brief and an agreement would be completed with ease. This did not occur and we became hung up on semantics. My own personal reaction to this was frustration and disbelief that we were still disagreeing over such a small amount of money. It seemed like the board had already compromised and given in on salary and insurance and this would provide financial hardship over the next three years. Perhaps some of my real life experiences colored my reactions in this situation. I have worked in districts where the teachers (including me) took a pay freeze for a year and also in districts where the raise was 1 and a half percent (this year and this was my administrator raise too) or two percent for two or three years. To me, a nine percent raise seemed to be more than adequate with no change in insurance cost to the employee.

We did come to a final agreement and that was a satisfying experience. Thanks, Margo for doing the final submit for the group!