Teacher, staff salaries frozen in Lee County
Lee district and unions to delay negotiations

by christina cepero
May 16, 2008

All Lee County public school teacher and support personnel salaries and benefits have been frozen at the 2007-08 rates.

Lee County School District officials and union representatives agreed Thursday to hold off on formal contract negotiations. They are expected to resume by Sept. 30. Teachers´ and support personnel´s pay rates will stay the same at least until then.

Donna Mutzenard, executive director of the Island Coast Florida Education Association, said the rationale is to have a better idea of student enrollment, property tax revenue and the district´s budget before negotiating contracts.

Enrollment is projected to increase by 2,600 students to 81,732 but in reality likely won´t increase by 2,000. Notices of proposed assessments will be mailed to property owners in August. And the school district´s final budget will be adopted Sept. 9.

Chief Human Resources Officer Greg Adkins said that there will be no pay raises for any of the district´s 11,000 employees, including Superintendent James Browder, school board members, administrators and secretaries, until contract negotiations for teachers and support personnel are finalized. Teachers make up more than 5,000 employees and support personnel more than 4,000.

A survey given to support personnel, who garnered a higher than 50 percent response rate, found that 1,011 said they supported freezing salary and benefits to save jobs and 1,036 said they didn´t support it.

“As long as it´s across the board and everybody works together, I can support it,” said bus driver Arto Brown, who was elected to represent transportation employees.

“We´d rather be frozen as long as it can save jobs. ... It´s like a family taking care of family.”

Assistant supervisor of plumbing Fred Bucher, who was elected to represent the maintenance workers, agreed.

“It´s a benefit for the district and to us to freeze it right now until we get more information,” Bucher said.

Suzan Rudd, service unit director of the Island Coast Florida Education Association, said the union didn´t want an employee to receive a scheduled raise and later have that money taken away.

“We want to remain flexible,” Rudd said.

Bertie Hill, a teacher at the Juvenile Detention Center, said teachers were worried they were going to lose pay such as supplemental money for coaching or advising.

“This is a lot more palatable to take back to them,” Hill said of the salary and benefits freeze.

For example, the base salary for a teacher with a bachelor´s degree who is entering his/her second year for the time being will remain at $37,080 instead of increasing to $37,822.

In earlier bargaining sessions, the unions considered different options such as teacher buyouts.

“It never went any further because it´s not financially feasible,” said Mark Castellano, president of the Teachers Association of Lee County.

“We know that there´s going to be concern (that contracts weren´t finalized) but we want people to be patient and to understand that we feel this is what we need to do to be thorough with our responsibility.”

The district will have a $28.8 million shortfall in state revenue for the 2008-09 budget.

Browder has outlined $14.7 million in cuts of district level positions and programs. That leaves $14.1 million left to be slashed, which most likely will come from salary and benefits. The district had budgeted $20.6 million per year in salary and benefits in its three-year salary schedule for 2006-09, but the remaining cut leaves only $6.5 million available for 2008-09.

That´s why the unions and district officials had to reopen negotiations.

The school district´s total budget for the 2007-08 school year is almost $1.7 billion.

The district´s insurance task force will continue discussing health insurance options throughout the summer.

They will explore offering the option of a Health Maintenance Organization plan in addition to the four Preferred Provider Organization plan choices. An HMO has a smaller network of doctors but lower out-of-pocket payments for hospital visits.

Each employee´s allotment of $6,372 per year for health insurance should stay intact but costs continue to spiral up.

“I don´t believe that the legislators are getting the message,” said Bob Rushlow, president of the Support Personnel Association of Lee County. “People need to start taking a stand and say, ´Look, do you realize what you´re doing here?´”