Opinion
What is the point, one might ask, of the Worcester County
Teachers Association negotiating teachers’ salaries with the
board of education if the board of education has no power to
guarantee the deal?
Although the board is trying to honor the terms of the
agreement it struck with the association as part of its budget
process, the school board’s ability to deliver on its promises
is entirely dependent on county government’s willingness to
go along with the program.
Because governments don’t actually make anything to sell
and can’t legally profit by charging fees higher than the cost
of services they deliver, they must get their income through
various taxes and fees they impose.
School boards, however, can’t do that. They are at the
mercy of state and county governments, even though they
are not a branch of either.
The school board is an independent entity that’s more answerable to the state board of education than it is to the
county or any other government authority. Except for money.
There are probably a thousand good arguments against it,
but public school systems in this state should have their own
taxing authority if they are to be responsible for setting the
payroll.
Otherwise, as has been shown by the recent budget battle
between the school board and the commissioners, good faith
negotiations between teachers and school boards are more
like hope-for-the-best negotiations.
The commissioners, of course, contend that they are not
preventing the board of education from giving raises or doing
whatever it wants, and that they are only fulfilling their obligation as the county paymaster to account for where the
money goes.
In the meantime, the elected board of education and the
school system are supposed to operate as an independent
agency, when it’s not independent at all.
It doesn’t make sense and somewhere, somehow there
must be a better way to do this.
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