Dr. Sidener Interview, May 19

Magnet School Article

“When the school is finished with construct6ion it will seat an adduiti8oanl 800 kids, and we need to fill the 800 seats.

We’re not going to change our academies. We may expand some of the ones we already have, because they have room to add more teachers, but in terms of what we have here I think we’re pretty much going to stay with the academies we already have.  We have ten.

The Magnet Grant provides release time. Like for your lead teachers. Which then will create empty seats. So more kids brings more teachers.

The active goal of the grant is to decrease minority isolation, which means for our school, increasing the white popu8lation. But you go out there and recruit. You can’t admit kids on a quota, or anything like that, but the hope is that you get the balance a little more balance. Right now, the schools is at about 72% Hispanic.

All the academies will be magnet academies. Just like every kid- well we’re through the tenth grade right now- is in an academy.

2011

That’s part of the whole package. I mean the perception is changing already. Just because you’re a magnet doesn’t mean like “boom” it changes the school. It changes because you do things better, kids win more awards, kids go to better colleges, kids come home and talk  about cool things that are happening in their classes. That’s how it changes. So I think the most important thing is that you’re doing things in the classes that kids like to do, or that are project orientated, or they see is relevant, and that’s how it will change.

 

UTD/Teachers Contract Article

The district has been in a very tenuous financial position- all districts in the state  of Florida have been, but our district is more so than others for a number of reasons. First of all, Dade is just more expensive. Things cost more here. Secondly, our previous administration at the district level brought in a whole lot of people at the higher level of administration, like in the budget office that really didn’t have experience in the county schools, and they didn’t quite understand how things work, so there were some fatal flaws.  The salary calculations were off. I think that is was off almost a million dollars a payroll, so the projected budget was already off $20 million for the future.

Inherited technical deficiencies in the budget process resulted in $202 million budget and reduction appropriations between July 1^st and September 2008. The fragile fiscal condition was compounded by a worsening national and state economy resulting in the exorbitant funding reductions from Tallahassee forced the district to make drastic cuts required an additional $123 million reduction in November. In January, the special legislative session resulted in the need to cut an additional$ 55 million from the budget.

So add it up, 202, plus 123, plus 55 is a lot of money. That’s $380 million. And the whole budget is a 3 billion dollar operating budget and you’re talking about cutting $400 million of it.

The state constitution requires that the district not go in the red. They have to end the year, by June 30^th, in the black. So the plan that they came up with was to ask employees to defer some of their pay till next year. So the plan was- depending if you were a 12 month employee, it was three days, if you’re a 10 month employee it’s two days- so basically what was agreed to by all of the unions except the teacher union, was to take

So let’s say I make a hundred dollars a day. So you’re going to take $300 of my pay and you’re going to wait and give it to me in October, instead of me getting it now. And they took that $300 and put it over five payrolls and $60 come out of each paycheck and you get it back. And they gave you’re the recess days, so you could take the days off so you could work. So essentially you’re kinda getting paid time off, but you’re deferring the payment until next year.

So the custodians agreed to it, the bus drivers agreed to it, the techs agreed to it, the administrators agreed to it, but the teachers union did not agree to it- until recently.

They did a straw vote which isn’t binding, but when it came down to the actual MOU (memorandum of understanding) went into effect, it went to a real vote. It was a vote on the binding contract.

Either way, they were going to end school early. No matter what, they had to have the money. But the difference is whether you were going to give your pay willingly and get it back in October or whether you were going to say “no” and they take it and you don’t get it back. When it finally came to that-when they were told ‘well it’s going to happen anyway. You can either vote yes and get the pay back or vote no and not get the pay back.’ So they voted yes.

They’re very upset about it. I think there’s a feeling that the Union didn’t do the right thing by them, they never really gave them the information from the beginning. I think that had they known it was going to happen anyway, they would have been more willing. I think there’s a distrust of the district whether or not they’re really going to give the money back, that maybe they’ll never see it again. Basically-everyone was supposed to get a raise but Alessia, who’s getting a raise right now? In the world? That’s just not happening.

I do [think Dade will follow through with their promises]. I trust the superintendent. I think he understands that he has asked his employeesto put themselves on the line and that he understands that his credibility and his ability to do the job will be completely undermined if he doesn’t come through. I think he’s smart enough to do that. He always talks about the human side. If you’re going to balance the budget, you’re either going to fire people- lay people off- or somehow you gotta get the money. In a school district money is spent on staff. It’s a people profession. It’s people intensive- that’s where our money is. 

It’s a constitutional law- all districts must balance their budgets.

 

And then the Unions position was’ find it somewhere else’ but the district kept coming back with ‘we’ve cut, we’ve cut, we’ve cut and the only thing we can do now is cut jobs.’ And we’re trying not to cut jobs.