Administrators need to share the burden

The headline in the June 22 Daily Herald should have read "Dist. 204 board freezes some salaries." At a time when the teachers of District 204 took a freeze on salaries - nothing added to the base, no step increase for years of service and no lane change for advanced education - not to mention absorbing increases in insurance coverage, and seeing their class sizes increase due to the release of 145 of their colleagues, the school board approved a $56,000 pay increase for 13 elementary school principals.

Since I had no prior notice of this action, I couldn't speak to it at the meeting on Monday night. I am speaking to it now.

Where is the much-touted fiscal responsibility of this school board and administration? The rationale provided by the administration and accepted by the four board members who approved the deal was that it had been crafted in 2008 and was the second step of a plan to increase the salaries of administrators to a competitive position among comparable districts. But 2010 is not 2008.

If the teachers had signed a multiyear agreement that included pay raises, there would have been clamoring for the contract to be reopened and for the teachers to take a freeze to show their fiscal responsibility in an economic crisis.

The pain of these deficits caused in part by the state budget crisis has not been equally felt by the administrators and the teachers. Very few administrative jobs were cut. The few positions that were eliminated put the administrators back in the classroom, taking a job from a probationary teacher. No administrators lost jobs, as many teachers and support staff did.

Fiscal responsibility to the students and residents of District 204 must come from more than just the teachers and the classified staff.

Val Dranias

President, Indian Prairie Education Association