This morning I was reading in the Journal about the survey that the school system sent to teachers asking for their feedback about taking a one day furlough next year. That one day would save the system $1 million, but the catch is that it would have to be taken on one of their professional days which is also known as "teacher work day" or in most households as "who am I gonna get to watch my kid today day". That's because the school system is mandated to provide a certain number of instructional hours each year so they can't furlough the teachers on an instructional day. After reading this I had a couple of questions:
- The article mentioned a $9 million deficit so why wouldn't they propose two or three furlough days in order to save two or three million dollars?
- The leader of the teacher's association said they are opposed to furloughs at this point because they know too little about next year's budget and they want to make sure that the schools have exhausted all other possibilities like program cuts. Good point, but when you read later in the article that employee salaries and benefits account for 90% of the budget you have to wonder exactly how much program cuts will add up to. Given that it seems a reasonable question to ask about benefits. In the private sector health benefits have been slashed over the last few years in order to better the bottom line. How about for school system employees? Would it make more sense to look at benefit packages for cost savings?
I don't want to sound like I'm ganging up on teachers because I truly admire what they do and having three kids in the system I truly appreciate what the good ones do every day (don't ask about the not so good). Still, when you're looking at the economic realities you have to put everything on the table and I don't think it's unreasonable to look everywhere you can for savings.
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Befuddled 
If district officials are looking to trim money, I hope they have looked at the top before they studied teachers’ salaries.
Have principals, the superintendent, and other officials that make way more money than teachers put some of their money on the line?
I wouldn’t support the teacher furloughs unless there are some concessions made by other officials with another zero or two in their paychecks.