Teacher Pay Cuts are NOT what last night's protest were about

The teachers are not protesting about pay cuts despite the North County Times slanted take on the protest.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_aa64ab84-4b91-5e85-bc19-2affb12386ec.html

In fact the teachers already accepted a pay cut to their current salaries to protect small class size in K-3 classrooms this year. Every teacher and employee knows there will be additional cuts next year.

The protests at the board meeting last night were about the following four issues:

(1) district admin not asking the school board to bargain for the far less onerous cuts recommended by the district's own budget committee.

(2) district admin insisting that the pay cuts be made permanent. District admin could have been just a fiscally responsible to suggest classifying the cuts next year as "provisional or temporary" for two or three years with reinstatement of today's salary if and only if the district is fully funded at the end of that time.

(3)district admin mandating that the teachers take NON-monetary roll backs of the teaching contracts rights regarding teacher transfer and "site based decision making" in addition to the proposed pay cuts that would equal about 5% of their already very low pay.

NOTE: VUSD Average pay is already extremely low compared to other San Diego County Districts. We are fifth from the bottom in San Diego County.
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html?appSession=437139247174619

(3a)Transfers--District admin wants to chance transfer policy to a provision that district admin (not site admin) can move any teacher at any time to any site. This provision would put unlimited power solely in the hands of the district superintendent who could use frequent transfers for punishing teachers with great evaluations just because dist admin does not like the teacher's politics or union activities.

(3b)Site based decision making--District admin wants to eliminate all of the currently very weak site base decision making provisions in the contract. This change would allow dist admin to make top down mandatory decisions regarding school site governance and site discretionary spending without the current very weak rights for opposition from site principals, site parents (school site councils) and site teachers.

Apparently district admin wants no repeat of the rebellion two years ago of several School Site Councils to the taking of all SSC money for LindaMood Bell. This rebellion lead directly to the election of two new school board members Angela Chunka and Elizabeth Jaka who had been prominent PTA members opposing the taking of the funds from local SSCs.

The teachers of the district understand there will be pay cuts. Even though the average pay of teachers in VUSD is now 32nd out of 37 reporting districts in San Diego County, the good teachers of VUSD are willing to sacrifice even more. They just want fairness. Last year the good teachers of VUSD accepted a pay cut to save small class size in K-3 classrooms. Last year no such similar cuts were made to salaries in surrounding districts which already were paying significantly more in their salaries to their teachers.

On last night's news coverage I saw one VUSD teacher with a sign at the School Board meeting which read that Oceanside teachers would have to accept 30 furlough days to bring their salary down to what his current salary is in VUSD.

The VUSD budget committee came up with cuts that were far more fair than those demanded by the VUSD district admin. These are the cuts that Joyce Bales should be recommending to the VUSD board members.

Sadly the school board, at the moment, seems enthralled by Joyce Bales et. al. Hopefully a majority on the board will see that Bales' recommendations are clearly not the best for the district or its schools, parents, students or employees.