About 30 people and only four of the seven board members were in attendance. Of that crowd, nine people spoke.
The board is required to conduct a salary hearing, since it plans to furlough all of its 15,000 employees for five days next year. It is also required to conduct a budget hearing before it votes on the district's FY11 budget on June 9. The board approved a tentative $819.4 million budget on May 12, in a vote of 6-1, with board member Alison Bartlett dissenting. The FY11 budget begins on July 1.
Board members Holli Cash, Dr. John Crooks and David Banks were absent. Cash announced at the last meeting she would not make it to Wednesday night's hearings because of a family trip. Bartlett said Banks and Crooks had reported to board Chairwoman Lynnda Crowder-Eagle they would be on vacation.
A teacher was the only person to speak to the board during the salary hearing. Wes McCoy, from North Cobb High School, focused more on the massive teacher layoffs than reduction in salaries. He said he has been teaching in the CCSD for nearly 33 years, and is faced with feelings of grief as he watches his colleagues in the classroom cut by the harsh economic conditions.
"As economic realities have become known and your decisions have been made, my colleagues have been living on pins and needles," McCoy told the board. "We seemed to be as expendable as a filing cabinet: useful, but easy to replace."
McCoy asked the board to support the teachers next year and work on building trust among parents, teachers, administrators and the board. He also called out the district for using its new teacher evaluation form as a tool to determine which teachers would be cut.
"Removing teachers from their jobs, while it may be necessary, is destroying one thing difficult to measure on any evaluation instrument, trust," he said. "It sets up an adversarial relationship between school officials, administrators and teachers ... Using your new evaluation instrument as a criterion for dismissing teachers this year has really shaken the trust between teachers and the evaluators who should be members of the same team."
Roxanne Lopez, another teacher who spoke to the board during its budget hearing on behalf of the Cobb County Association of Educators, criticized the board about making a majority of budget cuts that would directly affect teachers.
"We also oppose increasing class sizes, and we definitely oppose balancing the budget when there's a shortfall on the backs of educators," Lopez said. "We ask of you please be creative in your new budgets and think about how to do other ways of balancing, instead of just on us."
When asked by Dr. John Abraham what Lopez would recommend as a different and more creative way to balance the budget, she urged members to look at other counties to see what they are doing.
"Look at the other board members in different counties, in different states, what are they doing that you're not taking account for?" she said. "How can we help do it? If you want us to come and be part of the board and start helping research, I'm sure a lot of the teachers would love to do it on their days off."
McEachern High School graduate Brandy Judkins also asked the board to look at other options for budget cuts, other than laying off employees and, in turn, hurting Cobb's economy.
"So when you've laid off teachers or closed schools you've lost taxpayers, you've lost homeowners, you've lost sources of revenue that you yourself depend upon to function," Judkins said. "Freezing of step-increases and a full work week of furloughs further, even exponentially increase that loss of revenue. Will we get this money back? Will we get these teachers back? Will we get these positions back? Maybe, I'm not sure. But I do have a feeling that we may be condemning Cobb County to a more austere and bleak future."
Several Pebblebrook High School parents spoke to the board about the high school being moved further down in the list of schools to receive artificial turf, saying it wasn't just about football, but about the dire conditions of Pebblebrook's athletic and gym facilities. The parents asked that the school be moved up to the first tier of installation and that they receive the excess funds left over from the turf installation to improve their facilities.
Following the meeting, a group of about 10 Pebblebrook parents stayed to speak to Doug Shepard, the district's chief of SPLOST, about Pebblebrook's athletic facilities, showing him pictures of cracked ceilings in the school's locker rooms and mold and mildew growing in the weight training room.
Shepard said he would be committed to helping upgrade the Pebblebrook facilities over the next few years, but could not promise the school would be moved up in the artificial turf installation schedule.
Crowder-Eagle said the schedule could go to the board for a vote, but would have to be placed on the agenda at the board's approval.
Following a delay - which was due to a lawsuit brought on by east Cobb resident, Walter 'Pete' Borden, questioning the legality of using special purpose local sales tax dollars for artificial turf - the district is poised to begin installing the turf this month. Shepard said the lawsuit has forced the district to re-evaluate the turf installation schedule, installing turf more evenly throughout the county. This change would move South Cobb schools like Pebblebrook and Osborne, who claim they have more of a need than schools like Pope and Walton, to further down the schedule, possibly impacting their football seasons.
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People have the right to voice their opinions and I am glad they are interested enough to be passionate.
High school students can no longer advance to the next class without passing all core subjects. In light of Campbell High School having one-half of the 2008-2009 freshmen class fail, it stands to reason that there are a large number of students who did not pass freshmen courses again this year, during what should have been their sophomore year. They will sit in a freshman home room next year, what should be their junior year. How will they ever catch up? Some schools, such as North Cobb High School, are not even scheduling failing students into the courses they failed; they will be told to, “Get the credit somewhere else.” These students are now sixteen and able to drop out of school, which many of them will do.
This is only one example from the sixteen high schools in Cobb (of course not counting OHS since it only enrolls the county’s failing students as they drop out of their home schools). Think of how many failing students there are in total, failing students who did not pass with a teacher the first or second time! They need an environment like Oakwood. Revote this issue, and keep OHS open for those Cobb students who need it.
Where did anyone see where I said teachers complained about conditions? My point was that in all the CCSD should get rid of luxuries in order to save money. A/C is a luxury along with buildings that are more like upscale Corp HQ buildings. As far as the new athletic fields I think I read in MDJ that the company doing the job was doing it for FREE. TEACHERS get off of your high horse and do what you where highered for TEACHING. As for those of you who say do the math, try it yourself. 70% of budget is payroll subtract the 170 or so million that is short and what do you get? Teacher layoffs like any business would do. Teachers will get my respect when they earn it and thier are some that have, just not enough of them.
It doesn't seem to take the board terribly long to lie. Jeez, not only do they close a high school, but they close the one that provides a purely academic environment.
4. There were NO head administrators job cuts or RIF'd admin jobs at Glover St to help make the budget cuts...Fact
That is not true. There WERE job cuts at Glover St. - in Curriculum and Instruction, as there were last year....it just didn't make the papers as all the other cuts did...
Don’t think that teachers are making terrible salaries. I’ve done the calculations and I should have stayed with my first career aspirations to be a teacher myself, but I believed the lie that I would never make enough money to support a family being a teacher. If you look at the teacher salary schedule for the same number of years I’ve been in the corporate world, a 21 year experienced masters degree teacher makes the same as me, one with a specialist degree makes more – and with a 190 day contract vs a 260 day work year. I know, I know teachers work more than 190 days, I get it, I’m married to a teacher, but all in all, it’s a good deal. No, it’s a GREAT deal.
Stay on the teacher track!!
1. Teachers were NOT given an option to take furlough days rather then layoffs...Fact
2. Glover street employees and school administrators won when the board opted to vote yeah in getting 8 million in perks yearly rather then save jobs..Fact!
3. Not one suggestion on the CCSD survey was taken into consideration...Fact
4. There were NO head administrators job cuts or RIF'd admin jobs at Glover St to help make the budget cuts...Fact
5. The only person on the board that has any backbone is Bartlett...Fact
Now I would clearly like to know where all the savings for the past 11 years of splost, where CC has not had to budget in maintenance, technology, land purchase, new schools, additions for schools.et al..has gone?? For 11 years now, CC school taxes has not paid for the above items as they have been covered ny splost money and we only have 67 million in reserves??? As a CC taxpayor, how do we request a full audit from an outside management company to do an audit and evaluation of CCSD spending and waste? Clearly something is very wrong in CC.
Lastly, how many homes in CC? I am shocked to learn that 39,100 are seniors who are tax exempt.
Where do you see teachers complaining about the conditions we teach in? Most would be happy to do without in order for more teachers to keep their jobs & agree that excess spending has taken place within the county prior to our current economic crisis. A little forethought on the board's part could have helped the current situation tremendously. To say teachers are spoiled or elitist in some way is utterly ridiculous. Decisions on spending, etc. are not made teachers nor do we have any impact on those decisions.
To SamB- We did take a pay cut & furlough days last year. We will be taking more furlough days this coming school year as well. As far as teacher unions, they don't exist in GA buddy.