In Response
Dear Editor: Mr. Bekeris, I strongly support and admire the teachers and the support staff in Sitka.
I am very glad that the current district budget saved teachers from layoffs. I’m also glad that the Rural Schools funding came through this year. That was a close call! The Superintendent and the school board produced a budget that respected the value of the staff. Many school administrations simply would have made the budget work by pink slipping the recent and non-tenured teachers.
The Sitka Education Association might have stood by while this happened, as layoffs of this brutal kind would have conformed to the negotiated agreement between the district and the teachers union. I never saw any letters to the editor or other communications from the union, asking that all the teachers be kept. The administration did an awesome job in retaining everyone. The only teacher losses were to retirement. The way things turned out proved the administration’s moral integrity.
It is not an attack on the teachers to point out that Alaskan teachers enjoy retirement and benefit packages that are unheard of in many districts around the nation. Those packages reflect the high economic times of the oil boom. Now that economic circumstances have deteriorated, and now that starting with next year and each following year, Sitka School District will struggle to maintain the current very high quality of the schools – something owed to the quality of the entire staff – it behooves the Sitka Education Association to work with the district in new ways. Here is one example: teachers in most states work about ten years longer than Alaskan teachers to qualify to retire. What if Sitka teachers worked five years longer, spreading the cost of their retirement plans across a somewhat longer term? I can think of several other examples.
I ask the Sitka Educational Association to work strongly and proactively with the district to find more economical ways for all the teachers to keep providing quality services, while receiving compensation realistic to deteriorating economic prospects.
The upcoming year is a negotiating year. Far from feeling attacked, the teachers union should realize that financial adjustments must be made by everyone in the district. That may be an uncomfortable position, but the motive for pointing it out is completely opposite from an attack. Let SEA join in saving the schools and the jobs. You can’t keep doing such an outstanding job, if you sacrifice the young teachers and the new hires.
Thank you for all you do for our kids.
John Welsh, Sitka,
Parent of Three Students
