The Expense of Teacher Union Contracts

Steve Gunn, Research by Victor Skinner:

The School District of Philadelphia is facing a $218 million budget deficit in fiscal 2013, with forecasts for a $1.1 billion shortfall by 2017.
The district's School Reform Commission has responded with a controversial plan to close as many as 60 schools over the next five years and divert about 40 percent of the district's students into public charter schools, according to media reports.

The plan has been met with a great deal of resistance from the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. Nobody knows at this point if the money-saving plan will be implemented, or how the district will find its way out of its deficit situation.

In the meantime, it's clear that the school district is in the midst of a severe financial emergency, and must find a way to cut costs without negatively impacting students.

A good place to start would be the PFT's collective bargaining agreement.

We recently inspected a copy of the agreement, then used a freedom of information request to measure the costs of various provisions in the contract for the 2010-11 school year.

We found numerous examples of huge costs that could have been postponed, trimmed or cancelled to save the district millions of dollars without affecting anyone's base salary.

The list included $14.4 million to cover a three percent salary increase for teachers, a $66 million contribution to the union's "Health and Welfare Fund" and $165 million for free- or low- cost employee health insurance.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 5, 2012 2:27 AM
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