I deeply respect the volunteer town officials who work tirelessly. I disagree with their philosophy to balance town finances by extracting more teacher concessions. Health care is very expensive, but together with a pension, it is the bedrock of teacher compensation. This historical quid-pro-quo results from teachers, including Harvard’s, earning roughly half their industry peers (professionals with master’s degrees, which teachers must have) and is why comparing teacher benefits to industry is irrelevant.
The Press’s editorial, which encourages the School Committee to hold firm and reject the teachers’ proposal, adds to town divisiveness and is wrong. The School Committee has repackaged the 70/30 offer for 16 months and not budged. That’s not negotiating; it’s take-it-or-leave-it politics. This insults the teachers, who greatly compromised their position by offering to meet the town half way and move all current teachers from 90/10 to 80/20 (saving the town $90,000) and new teachers to 70/30 (saving thousands more). The difference in the current two positions, the town having not moved, is $90,000—not insignificant, but not much in an 17.8 million dollar town budget.
Comparing teacher compensation across similarly situated towns, as Alice Rennie does in her article, proves that the school board’s offer is miserly. Few comparable towns provide 70/30 health benefits to teachers, let alone those at the top of the academic performance and wealth spectrums like Harvard. The Press editorial states that Harvard teachers are competitively compensated as Rennie’s charts show. But what the charts show is that for a decade (and not shown, long before that), our teachers were substantially underpaid. Per the Department of Education, they lagged far below the state average and only recently started earning slightly more than the state average. To ignore this paints an inaccurate picture of how we pay our teachers. For years Harvard benefited from the hard work of its teachers while we underpaid them. During this time, per capita income and home prices skyrocketed to the top of the state list. Demand to live in Harvard is largely based on the schools. Yet, after finally catching up and achieving only three years of average pay, town boards demand teachers accept deep cuts.
In absolute dollars Harvard spends 14 percent less per pupil today than it did in 1993. We rank 245 out of 327 districts in per-pupil spending. Numbers don’t lie. I don’t like taxes either, but we should be proud to support our teachers, restore school funding, provide good benefits for all of our town employees, and meet the teachers half way as they have graciously offered to do. Under the teachers’ proposal all teachers will eventually be at 70/30 eventually. I disagree with the Press, and urge the school board to actually negotiate, compromise, and accept the teachers’ fair offer. This will end the work-to-rule crisis that town officials have let drag on far too long.
Todd Brown
Littleton County Road
