Parents, School Officials Talk Budget Problems, Solutions as Contract Mediation Stalls

After Tuesday’s mediation session between the t and its teachers union yielded no contract resolution, Superintendent JoAnn Andrees again asked parents for help during a community gathering Thursday evening.

"I like the process. I think that if they invited teachers to a similar session, the results may be a bit better than they have been,” said Kathy Chiaravalli, 53, of West Bloomfield, who attended the event at . “It’s a good try. It’s better than not having it.”

Andrees, along with Deputy Superintendent for Business and Operations Thomas Goulding and school board members, offered background information and opinions regarding possible solutions to the $1.7 million budget deficit that the district faced in 2010 and Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget proposal, among other topics. The district asked parents for input after the discussion and passed out copies of parent suggestions from previous events that the board said were being considered at the bargaining table.

The event comes two days after a mediation session between the district and the West Bloomfield Education Association (WBEA) yielded no contract resolution, according to Cyndi Austin, Uniserve director for the Michigan Education Association. Austin disclosed a contract proposal that she said was suggested at the session Tuesday and met with no response from the district. The two-year proposal, which includes a 3 percent off-schedule pay cut in the first year and a 20 percent cut in schedules B and C in the second year, would save the district $3.7 million over its duration, Austin said.

“The district was saying that WBEA was not offering concessions to help save money, and you can see that our proposal clearly has concessions in both years,” Austin said. “The district has not given us anything to look at. I don’t see a point in continuing to keep things at the bargaining table.”

While the board would not comment on the state of contract negotiations, it did offer answers to questions regarding Snyder’s controversial emergency financial manager legislation and the role of the state in local schools.

“We want to be able to control our own destiny,” Andrees said. “If an emergency financial manager is brought from Lansing to West Bloomfield, they won’t care about what we like and what we need, they’ll just want to make cuts.”

“The Department of Education is not really concerned about the quality of education," Goulding said. "They’re concerned about our bottom line and how to balance the budget.” 

The WBEA executive board plans to meet prior to  at 7 p.m. at , but had not heard of a special public meeting that would need to be called for an imposition of a contract to take place, Austin said.

“(The WBEA will) continue to do what we've been doing. We are certainly going to make sure we're there, should the school board choose to do anything,” Austin said.

Until the next mediation session scheduled for next week, Andrees promised those in attendance Thursday that the district would carefully consider proposals to reduce the budget deficit.

“There have been efforts, but I don’t think they’ve been deployed as well as they could be,” Chiaravalli said.