Town of Braintree

anony, can we talk?

i am not a teacher nor do i have any ties to the school system other than to realize that i want a great system for the kids in this town. i am not your adversary! anony, i have no faith in our school committee nor your teacher's union, yet i assure you, i want the best i can afford for our children and their teachers. i want the best i can afford under the constraints of prop. 2 1/2. when it has been proven to me that all our depts. have done everything they can to rein in misbegotten and misappropriated budgets then i would consider voting an override. and yes, that includes past agreements with the police and fire depts. that we can ill afford today. you anony got a l% increase this yr. under your new contract and what else? did you receive a step-increase this year, and if so at what percent? do you consider that step-increase a raise? do you realize that that raise also comes from the town's budget? so if you look again, maybe you would concede receiving more than l% this year in both monies and perks? everytime you have a day off with pay, we still pay for a substitute besides. we have an $84 mil. budget to sustain 34K citizens, why are we always at one another's throats? we give approx. 1/2 of that budget to our schools, why isn't that enough? we have about 5K students and $42mil. to spend, why isn't that sufficient? anony, it is not productive to call names, you call me cheap, members of the school committee have called me selfish, how do you justify that? do you know me or my bent? i am your benefactor, i want to work with you, minus animosity, to all our benefit. what suggestions have you made to your school committee and/or union that would realize an increase in your pay and serve to decrease the overall expenses of the system? we seem to have reached our saturation point for new funds, we are not the golden goose. i don't expect nor want you to tell me anony, but i hope you will, for yourself, factor what we actually pay you for your 9 months of employ (approx.) and then tell me if you think your being compensated fairly.
i would appreciate your help in reaching a better understanding of where our differences lie.

By money matters

And now comes the school dept.

The plot thickens, the schools want to pay for part of their new raises with extra monies they have on hand.Now Why would they want to do that?

The schools need to come up with an additional $300,000 to pay teachers
from school start in September .super Peter K has on hand some $130,000 available.

The school dept will ask town meeting in May to transfer an additional $150,000 from the stabilization fund for the rest and any additional would come from the school dept.

Remember this year one of a one, two, three, four year increase schedule, it will get much worse!

The next three years are going to be beautiful with tax increases to pay for the contract negotiated by the school committee The growth in the schools budget due to teachers pay alone will bury the town!.

the School Committee and the Superintendent have a tremendous amount of respect for the role Town Meeting plays. State law as it is and school officials do not feel as if they are above Town Meeting.Yeh I'll
bet.

As to the school contract, it is my understanding that it is state law that dictates we treat school contracts differently than others. I am not a lawyer, but I believe it is Chapter 105E (section 7b) and Chapter 71 (section 34) that spell it out.

Obviously any contract settlement needs to be funded (i.e. needs money to pay for any increases). My understanding is that the difference with a School contract is that they do not need to get appropriation approval from the legislative authority (in our case, Town meeting) for the contract to be binding. That is related to the law that states Town Meeting votes on the total amount of the appropriations requested by the schools (not broken down by line items) and cannot place any restriction on such appropriations.



By Why Bother its a blank check

$300,000

I think Mr. Bottiggi just gave out in bonuses the amount Mr. Kurtzburg needs from town meeting, isn't that a hoot.