Walker’s Vindication: The controversial Wisconsin budget reform saves teachers’ jobs

[Conservative]

Walker’s Vindication: The controversial Wisconsin budget reform saves teachers’ jobs

Emily Koczela had been anxiously waiting for months for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s controversial budget repair bill to take effect. Koczela, the finance director for the Brown Deer school district, had been negotiating with the local union, trying to get it to accept concessions in order to make up for a $1 million budget shortfall. But the union wouldn’t budge.

“We laid off 27 [teachers] as a precautionary measure,” Koczela told me. “They were crying. Some of these people are my friends.”

On June 29 at 12:01 a.m., Koczela could finally breathe a sigh of relief. The budget repair bill​—​delayed for months by protests, runaway state senators, and a legal challenge that made its way to the state’s supreme court​—​was law. The 27 teachers on the chopping block were spared.

With “collective bargaining rights” limited to wages, Koczela was able to change the teachers’ benefits package to fill the budget gap. Requiring teachers to contribute 5.8 percent of their salary toward pensions saved $600,000. Changes to their health care plan​—​such as a $10 office visit co-pay (up from nothing)​—​saved $200,000. Upping the workload from five classes, a study hall, and two prep periods to six classes and two prep periods saved another $200,000. The budget was balanced.

“Everything we changed didn’t touch the children,” Koczela said. Under a collective bargaining agreement, she continued, “We could never have negotiated that​—​never ever.”

In Brown Deer and school districts across the state, Walker’s budget repair bill, known as Act 10, is working just as he promised

Now that the law is in effect, where are the horror stories of massive layoffs and schools shutting down? They don’t exist​—​except in a couple of districts where collective bargaining agreements, inked before the budget repair bill was introduced, remain in effect.

The only other district seeing such massive layoffs is Kenosha, where 212 teachers will be fired this year. “Kenosha is in the same boat as [Milwaukee], with a collective bargaining agreement signed before Walker took office that lasts until June 30, 2013,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on July 16. “But most other Wisconsin districts have avoided layoffs and massive cuts to programs.”

Looks like Walker was right, and all the liberals and unions people were wrong.

Called it.

 

[Conservative]

12 hours, and not a peep from the liberals who castigated Walker over this law.

Way to man up and admit you were wrong, people. Kudos.

 

[Patrick2]

Looks like conservatives saved the teachers jobs inspite of the leftwing unions.

 

[Conservative]

Looks like conservatives saved the teachers jobs inspite of the leftwing unions.

I think all the liberal weenies who were bitching about how evil Walker was for doing this must have had aneurysms or something