SEA submits another proposal to be met with superficial and cosmetic response

WHAT WAS THE PROPOSAL ??????

I read the facebook page which had a mention of people being "asked for transparency or to show the proposals being submitted for negotiations. Under current rules, that cannot occur"
why is the public not allowed to see what publicly paid teachers and a publicly paid school boards propose on how to spend our public tax dollars ????I see a lot of fingers pointing but they point nowhere

Regarding:
• The ability to attract and retain quality teachers.
• Respect as valued professionals.

How do you put that in a contract?
Do they write "GIVE ME..GIVE ME... GIVE ME MORE!"

How do they expect respect when they behave as they do? Is it because they think they are so much better than the rest of us?

Glad to see these faces of the teachers who think they deserve respect. With their website and FB page, and they also link to Strongsville Post and cleveland.com, and we see on here and the videos - at least when we are out around town and at the mall, when we see these teachers we can know who expects us to pay more of their bills as we have less and less.
If it were me, I'd be so embarrassed!

this site is a joke right???? there is no way this is for real???? this is something you would expect of socialist propaganda sites .
if this is what the teachers use for information,what are they teaching our children

Link to lookup Strongsville teachers salaries as public information from the state of Ohio

http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/teacher-salary

Does anyone know who the bargaining representatives are for the school board side of the table in the negotiations (besides Dollar-Bill)? I thought I read somewhere in one of the comment threads that someone said that at least the names of the negotiators are not "classified" information.

Who is Dollar Bill? What law firm does he work for?

Does anyone know anything?

On the school board side: Superintendent John Krupinski, assistant superintendent Cameron Ryba, High School principal William Steffen, Chapman Elementary principal Andy Trujillo and the lawyer William Pepple - or, as the kiddies maturely call him, "Dollar Bill."

My remark about being "unclassified" referred to the previous contract negotiations a couple years ago, when the district wouldn't tell the voters who was representing them at the table.

Thank you Ken for listing the players on the taxpayers side of the table, that is very helpful. How about the union side - have any names or know how many are at the table?

I posted this on the other article >> since the contract negotiations are the discussion of topic of late, and we can't get information on what both sides are proposing (since it is confidential), does anyone have a copy of the last contract with SEA that we can look at and scrutinize? This would be a good point of discussion for the group to see what was negotiated and what had passed in the last contract. Could also give us some thoughts on what the school board might be looking at for this years contract. Just a thought.

I thought, and I may be wrong, that this is public knowledge and should be made available to the public. No? Yes?

tom-
So, if Tracy Linscott's average salary is $80,869.00 and they convert 9.3% of STRS to salary, the new salary will be $88,390 before any increases? Well, at least no more pick up!
How about that? $88,390 for 9 months work; for 184 days -thats $480/day. For even a 10 hour day, that's $48/hour. And only has to work 9 months to get better medical benefits than the rest of us and we pay more than he does towards the premium - which means the taxpayer is paying their own and some of the teachers share.

Gee, I would be frustrated too if that's all I could squeeze out of the taxpayers.

The Board shall be responsible to pay nine percent (9.0%) of the employee's salary to the
School Employees Retirement System (SERS) toward the employee's required
contribution. The Board shall "pick-up" nine percent (9.0%) of the employee-required
contribution of members of the bargaining unit to SERS and with the Board having
agreed to do so, the Board Treasurer is hereby authorized to contribute to SERS in
addition to the Board's required employer contribution, an amount equal to each
employee's contribution to SERS up to nine percent (9.0%) in lieu of payment by such
employee. Such amount contributed by the Board on behalf of the employee shall be
treated as deferred wages paid by the Board to SERS from the contract wage otherwise
payable to such employee in cash. Effective with the first paycheck after Board approval
of this Agreement, no state or federal taxes will be deducted on the amount of any
bargaining unit member's contribution to SERS (the "pick-up") with the appropriate
notations made on the individual bargaining unit member's W-2 form.

I find it unconscionable that you are trying to make teachers out to be public enemy #1. Lyn based on the stupidity of your comments, I'm surprised you can do the math. $48/hr for a master's degreed professional teacher sounds pretty reasonable to me. I wonder how many Sandy Hook residents think they're teachers are over paid, or how many $200/hr lawyers would be willing to give up their salary to teach our children. James and Tom M, your comments are completely idiotic as well. I'm thankful I don't live in Strongsville.

Comment to TSW – no I am not a lawyer, just a concerned taxpayer who after years and years of having my head in the sand, have now awakened and now finding out how us taxpayers are being robbed blindly by government Unions. Like anyone else, I would like to know how the taxpaying dollars are being spent and feel that I have an opinion and voice in the matter.

With all the numbers you have been adding to this blog, I am assuming that you must be an MBA in economics or finance? We need a good numbers person on the board - perhaps YOU would consider putting your name in the hat when a board position opens up?

Comment to PJ – thank you for that link. It was very helpful. I see that some of the bloggers are already scrutinizing and looking over the contents. It is 109 pages long, but very interesting reading material.

One thing the board should consider in their negotiations is the question of what is called “dues check-off”. This is a practice of the city schools deducting the union dues directly from the teacher’s paychecks, like tax withholding or Social Security, and sends a check to the union. Why shouldn’t the union members write a check to the their union themselves? Why should that be a function of the treasurer? This takes a lot of time and effort away from her own job responsibilities. If this practice can’t be voided and removed from the contract, how about charging a processing fee for this service like you see nowadays on many utility bills?

People – can I make a suggestion here?

Time and time again we hear someone say that all of the postings (reply trails to a specific posting) from so-and-so have been deleted when she/he pulled their original post. Unfortunately, there was a lot of good discussion associated with that “train of thought” but, because the person pulled it, all of the trails that were attached to that posting are deleted as well. The other problem is that these posting trails are becoming so long, in order to keep up with what is current; one has to review/scan the entire listing to see what is new off of the original posts.

My proposal – everybody post every post in the reply box at the end of the article so that none of the postings will be deleted, and, it will be easier to follow. All you have to do is look up where you left off from before. If somebody wants to delete their post, let them. It will not disrupt or delete the train of discussions that will be in chronological order.

I can see where someone could set up a posting hoping that everyone replies to it, just so that they can delete their posting and effectively remove the content of the other postings. (Good tactic to remove the anti-union or pro-union posting information).

Please support our teachers. We live in a great community and need to continue to have a strong education system. With 3 children in the district for over 9 years now, we have had fabulous teachers. Teachers that go above and beyond to teach OUR kids, not theirs. Our test scores and graduation rates show how well our kids and teachers have been doing. Please get behind them and support the success they help our kids achieve.

Hello, I do not live in the area but did at one time teach at Parma Senior. I think the union can be a disgrace to the teaching profession. I currently teach at a small high school east of Cleveland. I feel bad for tax payers because as soon as a levy is passed in a person's community, the union all of a sudden thinks they are entitled to that money. I remember talking to a colleague of mine who happened to be a representative for our union and her exact words were, "if our levy passes this year, we will fight for a raise." Is that really the reason we pass levies? And on a side note, I don't know anybody who gets as good of health insurance coverage as I do. My own family members have thousands of dollars of deductables every year and my deductible is one hundred dollars per family member. THe people in the union fighting for these "fair and equitable contracts" need to pull their heads out of their asses and step into the real world. If Strongsville's levy would have failed last year, would the union still be asking for raises/more financial assistance?

"Their" website is claiming they want time during the school day to make lesson plans, grade papers, respond to parents e-mails, blah blah blah - I suggest they work and 8/9 hour day like everyone else to get all of that stuff done, take 1/2 lunch and the rest of the time they can sit around and respect each other until the cows come home. At not time have I heard anything about the kids. Out of one side of their mouths they say "it's all about the children" but the other side of their mouth is speaking a different topic. I think "their" website was an epic fail! It is high time that this economy affect their wallets too! And as for respect - I respect the teachers who respect me - but have come across way too many who only respect themselves.

Debbie Palmer-

Can you do a short article that would let people know about this:
http://www.strongnet.org/cms/lib6/OH01000884/Centricity/Domain/1/Questions%20and%20Answers.pdf

It provides info from the district that answers many questions about what is going on.
Since you have provided people with the teachers website and FB page, I think you should also provide the info that the district has online.
As you usually are "fair and balanced", we may just be ahead of you on this - as you are probably gathering other info for the article to put this in.

So the newest casualty caused by the teachers is the students ability to participate in college accredited coursed. If the strike is still active next week when the parent meeting was to be held (the schools are under lockdown before/after school for sure next week) the meeting will not take place which - according to what our "beloved" (and I use that term lightly) teachers are telling the kids - if the meeting does not take place - they will be unable to take advantage of these college accredited courses offered by Tri-C. When the last levy was before the voters the teachers claimed "it is for the children". I have seen NOTHING in this fiasco that benefits the children! Some teachers are even claiming that they will be deleting any grades that are posted by the substitutes. Grow up teachers!