


At a time when food and gas costs are rising, Manatee schoolteachers and employees face a stark choice: take a 5 percent pay cut or watch your colleagues lose their jobs. As part of an effort to cut $21 million from next year's district budget, principals have submitted proposals to cut 300 to 400 jobs at schools, including teachers of electives, guidance counselors, janitors and secretaries.
But the district now says the layoffs can be avoided if all district employees take a pay cut next year. Teachers, bus drivers and other workers would need to take a pay cut of about 5 percent, while higher-paid administrators, including principals and assistants, would lose 7.5 percent of their salaries.
The district began the cost-cutting process Friday by eliminating 47 administrative positions, 33 of which were open. But the plan to cut pay rather than positions hinges on whether the unions representing teachers and support staff agree to the pay cut when they begin negotiations with the district in the next few months.
Justin Erickson, a vocational tech teacher at Haile Middle School in East Manatee, heard about the possible pay cuts at about 8 p.m. Wednesday when he was still at school working. On Friday, he planned to work until 10 p.m. to help students prepare for a science and technology competition in Orlando.
"Here we are working, giving our heart and soul every day, and the pay doesn't reflect the work for the efforts that any teacher puts in," Erickson said. "You have to take care of your family."
Asked if he would vote to accept a pay cut, Erickson said, "I don't know which way I would vote at this time."
School districts across the state are grappling with budget cuts resulting from reduced sales tax collections, decreased population growth and a troubled housing market.
The Manatee County School District employs about 7,000 people, making it one of the largest employers in the county. About 3,000 of those are teachers. The 47 administrative job cuts announced Friday include the director of high schools, who is retiring at the end of the school year, and an assistant superintendent job that was not filled.
The School Board will be asked to approve the salary reductions for administrative staff at a meeting on April 28.
Superintendent Roger Dearing said he understood that pay cuts would be tough, but he said cutting hundreds of jobs from schools would have too great an effect on students and remaining teachers.
"It's easier for everyone to sacrifice 5 percent than to ask 300 to 400 people to sacrifice 100 percent," he said. "If those hundreds of people are not going to be in the school system, the workload is going to be tremendous and there'll be a definite drop of service to our children."
But the pay cuts would set back progress the district has made in raising teachers' pay. In recent years, teachers' starting pay in Manatee has risen from 19th to sixth-highest in Florida.
"Even with this 5 percent cut, we'll still be competitive," Dearing said. "School districts all over Florida are laying off staff. What's going to happen to level of service for children in those schools?"
The local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents about 1,000 custodians, bus drivers and other support workers in Manatee, plans to poll members by telephone next week. President Bruce Mohr said initial reaction was that some members would rather take a pay cut than risk losing their job or seeing colleagues laid off.
Pat Barber, president of the Manatee Education Association, which bargains on behalf of 2,700 teachers and teaching assistants, said teachers were being put into an unfair position.
"They deserve better than to be offered an option of seeing their colleagues lose their job or having their families suffer by having their pay reduced," Barber said.
If the pay cuts are rejected by district employees, elementary schools would each have to cut $125,000, middle schools would have to cut $165,000 and high schools would have to cut $360,000. One proposal, submitted by the principal of Braden River Middle School, would cut an electives teacher, a custodian, a clerical worker, discretionary funds and supplements paid to team teaching leaders, a yearbook adviser and the school newspaper adviser. Those cuts would total about $164,000.
In the meantime, Manatee school employees have a tough choice to ponder.
"I think it's frightening, but then again I guess I'd hate to see people lose their jobs," said Janice Pinsonneault, a seventh-grade math teacher at Braden River Middle School. "I think there should be other solutions."
(heraldtribune.com)