New D15 board should try to rescind 10-year teacher contract

I was pleased to see that the current board of District 15 received a resounding rebuke from the property taxpayers in the district by all of them being ousted for their ill-conceived, reprehensible, fiscally irresponsible 10-year contract with the teacher's union.

Agreeing to 40 percent over 10 years for just showing up every day in a foreshortened work year is nothing short of irrational. Forty percent quite unrelated to performance or effectiveness or results. Forty percent exacerbated by the step and lane increases that will inflate the base on which the increases are computed.

Forty percent that leaves we taxpayers committed for 10 years, regardless of how economic conditions may fluctuate. Forty percent no matter that this is grossly disproportionate to the generally modest if at all wage increases in the real world.

I think back to board President Peggy Babcock's assertion in the Chicago Tribune last year, that "It was a pleasure to put in place the kind of fiscal planning that successful businesses do."

How naive of her to think that successful businesses would engrave "fiscal planning" irreparably in stone, rather than providing the flexibility to adjust and revise their plans as conditions dictate. How absurd. Worse yet, it was quite incomprehensible that this reckless board would blithely ignore the huge opposition to their abominable 10-year contract and try to foist another $130 million debt on we taxpayers last November. Thankfully this later fiscally thoughtless, misguided plan produced an unqualified defeat.

I can only hope that the incoming board, people who seem to have a sense of responsibility to taxpayers as well as to students and educators, will instruct their attorneys to find some way to rescind this outrageous contract and negotiate an agreement that is fair and sensible for everyone.

Ronald C. Brown

Rolling Meadows