I'm getting ready to publish a brief guide for Colorado school boards on collective bargaining issues ripe for reform -- opportunities to promote fairness and individual rights, and to save taxpayer dollars. One area in which I've done a few research updates is that of teachers union president leave time. Do you know how much you and your fellow taxpayers are spending to pay your local teachers union president to leave the classroom and work for a private labor organization?
The phenomenon isn't unique to Colorado, though I haven't studied it in-depth anywhere else. In several school districts the negotiated master agreement not only grants the local teachers union president full-time leave from the classroom, leave that counts toward earning seniority credit on the old-time salary schedule, but also asks taxpayers to foot the bill. Not all of the bill. A common arrangement requires the school district to continue paying the salary and benefits of the president (very often an expensive senior employee), while the union reimburses the taxpayers for all or part of the cost of a first-year teacher. The net difference is a subsidy from your wallet to the union.
When I first studied this issue in 2003-2004, my Independence Institute report found that numerous districts were coughing up tens of thousands of dollars for unions to conduct their own business. The worst offender was the Poudre School District in Fort Collins, Colo., where the difference between the union president's salary and the reimbursement totaled $56,557. A handful of districts showed there is a more responsible way to handle the situation, by requiring the union to pay for every penny of its officers' salary while they are relieved of classroom duties to serve the union.
I did a similar study in 2009-10, this time putting less focus on the numbers but emphasizing the almost reckless lack of accountability for the way publicly-funded release time privileges are used. During the intervening years had come the complaint and Colorado Supreme Court ruling in Rutt v Poudre Education Association, in which a lot was learned about the union president's 2004-05 work on a partisan state legislative campaign, including active recruitment of volunteers during school hours.
How the state's highest court let the union off for sidestepping campaign finance laws is another story. But to me, the disappointing fact remains that the same arrangements remain to let Poudre's teachers union president take the year off to work for the union mostly at public expense. Using the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) -- my state's version of FOIA -- to find the latest figures, I learned that Fort Collins taxpayers in 2010-11 were responsible for $67,764 of the union president's compensation.
How much are you paying the local teachers union president? In the scheme of education budgets, it's not a huge savings. But local school boards who are serious about spending tax dollars more wisely cannot sweep the issue under the rug.
When I first studied this issue in 2003-2004, my Independence Institute report found that numerous districts were coughing up tens of thousands of dollars for unions to conduct their own business. The worst offender was the Poudre School District in Fort Collins, Colo., where the difference between the union president's salary and the reimbursement totaled $56,557. A handful of districts showed there is a more responsible way to handle the situation, by requiring the union to pay for every penny of its officers' salary while they are relieved of classroom duties to serve the union.
I did a similar study in 2009-10, this time putting less focus on the numbers but emphasizing the almost reckless lack of accountability for the way publicly-funded release time privileges are used. During the intervening years had come the complaint and Colorado Supreme Court ruling in Rutt v Poudre Education Association, in which a lot was learned about the union president's 2004-05 work on a partisan state legislative campaign, including active recruitment of volunteers during school hours.
How the state's highest court let the union off for sidestepping campaign finance laws is another story. But to me, the disappointing fact remains that the same arrangements remain to let Poudre's teachers union president take the year off to work for the union mostly at public expense. Using the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) -- my state's version of FOIA -- to find the latest figures, I learned that Fort Collins taxpayers in 2010-11 were responsible for $67,764 of the union president's compensation.
How much are you paying the local teachers union president? In the scheme of education budgets, it's not a huge savings. But local school boards who are serious about spending tax dollars more wisely cannot sweep the issue under the rug.
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