Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > November > 09 > Entry
Littlejohn and Lynch talk money
Here’s what Pat Lynch, president of the Dayton teachers union, said Wednesday when I asked her for her view on the state of the school district’s finances:
“I disagree with a lot of the ways the board has spent money the last few years, but I know and believe the bulk of the problem is state funding,” she said.
In reply to a similar question Wednesday, Gail Littlejohn, president of the Dayton school board, noted the district has gone nearly 15 years without an operating levy:
“I think we waited too long. We probably should have had a levy in 1997 or 1998,” she said. “State funding is an issue for everyone and its the real source of the frustration.”
There’s more.
Given the disrict’s money woes, I asked Lynch what steps the board should be taking to find money for a raise for teachers and to avoid cuts and layoffs come January:
“We need to see (cuts) in the administration instead. I think there are a lot of folks we could lose there and not feel it,” she said. “The only administrative cuts proposed for this year were people who will retire in June anyway,”
I told Lynch’s view to Littlejohn. Here’s her reply:
“Those are valid arguments,” she said. “We have to have discussions where we say there are no sacred cows. And there are none. Our eyes are on every position in the district.”
In other comments of interest from these two key players in Dayton’s labor dispute, Lynch addressed the anger many of her members feel and Littlejohn explained the reason for the way the rejected contract proposal was crafted.
Lynch said teachers have been through crises like this before and many feel they’ve been burned before.
“The big issue with members is there is a lot of mistrust,” she said. “There are people here with a lot of history and memory.”
Littlejohn said the reason the board proposed a one-time payout rather than a traditional 1 percent raise is concern about next year’s budget.
“We can’t ratify any contract unless we know we have the money to pay for it,” she said. “We have to know we have the money to operate next year. That’s why we have the provision there to reopen discussion next year on wages and benefits.”
Even so, Littlejohn said there may be a way to create wiggle room that would allow for a traditional raise.
“There may be some flexibility there,” she said.
Permalink | Comments (26) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Comments
By teachermom
November 18, 2006 7:28 PM | Link to this
Thank you to JOE Lacey for letting the public know how the BOE is operating. It is obvious that there is a lot of behind the scenes funny business. It is clear that you are being left out of a lot of decisions that you would not be in agreement with. This is not what the public would want either. But then again, the public is being left out of a lot too.By FundingGuru
November 13, 2006 8:54 PM | Link to this
I did my undergrad thesis on school funding-spent several months in Cols meeting with the plantiff attys, reading the findings, compiling data, etc. The DeRolph suit was brought around 1994 and mostly settled by 1998. Many of us at that time thought the legislature would abide by the ruling and come up with a new funding plan, but they never did. Districts that waited got burned, not wanting to push what may have been unneccesary and unpopular local levies and all the while losing money while waiting for the defendant (the State) to pony up as they were ordered to by the Ohio Supreme Court! The public, meanwhile, has no idea of the funding law, the cases, the findings of fact, and even the basic economics of how levies work. I read thousands of pages and included 50 pages of appendices alone in my paper—and that was just a brief summary. The system is immense and was designed that way to keep the public from bothering (according to the court’s finding.) And now I find myself teaching in the #1 charter-school district in the nation, and at the district’s public school for expelled students. My students are often on probation, ordered by the courts to attend our program, involved in drugs, gangs, etc., and these kids tell me, “it doesn’t matter, I’ll just go to [insert charter program name.] And yet, the program still has the 3rd highest test scores in the district! (Behind only Stivers and DECA.) If anyone thinks they can do that, they can come take my job! Charter proponents and the General Assembly have done a fantastic job of dismantling the public school model of an equitable and constitutionally guaranteed education for all Ohio children. In Ohio, education is a civil right that has been taken away from those who most need it. We deny these kids an education and undermine the teachers who provide it. Until the General Assembly takes this issue seriously, local hands are nearly tied.By Anne
November 12, 2006 9:42 PM | Link to this
Rick, are you really familiar with HOW Mack/Littlejohn went about getting new principals? Look at a former principal of an elementary school. Not being rehired as principal when the school was reorganized, the powers that be choose to give this person a title and an office downtown. Having NO qualifications for this new assignment, the district then sent this person all over the country, on the DPS dime, to get some training. Doing nothing constructive for the district while in this new post, they then sent this person back to a school, as a principal! Way to make some changes!By daytondriver
November 11, 2006 10:27 PM | Link to this
I wouldn’t call it class envy. I would call it disappointment that there is any kind of “class system” to begin with. But then again, human beings kill for fun and profit on a daily basis, so the nearly hilarious yet ultimately sad fact that there is any kind of “class system” only confirms my worse suspicions of some human beings. But by the mere chance of the universe, we are who we are. None of us are better, or worse than the rest of us. You don’t seem to understand this basic tenent of equality.By Rick
November 11, 2006 3:27 PM | Link to this
There is so much anger and misinformed opinion in many of these posts. Mr. Lacey, please continue to ask questions but please do not degenerate into being just a contrarian. Ricky Boyd, in the end, turned out to be a bull in a china shop, just creating damage. I suggest you dive into reading about school issues, from a variety of perspectives. Oldprof, you are dead on in your post. Dayton Driver, you seem full of anger and class envy. I.e., “Because when you break it down, Percy Mack, Gail Littlejohn, and the rest at 115 Ludlow, do less for the lives of children of DPS than the school janitor. They are better than noone (sic) else. ” Those folks have done a great deal for the DPS. They recognized that having an involved principal is the most important factor in having an effective school and replaced over 50% of the principals. The school system is moving in the right direction.By Charterschool Hater
November 11, 2006 1:32 PM | Link to this
Scott, I have a couple of questions. When are you going to do an expose of the really poor financial and hiring practices of Dr. Mack and indeed the current and past Board of Education. I think you owe it to us your readers. After all the Bd of Ed is going to ask us to part with more of our hard eaerned tax dollars soon and we need the whole story. You could start with the whole Ludlow Street debacle. They have wasted millions on that mess. Who made the reccomendations on this one. Whta morivated the board to puchase it? How much money have we poured into the bottomless pit? Please Joe chime in on this one. What have you Joe Lacey been told about this? Lastly a message to Joe Lacey. Littlejohn and MAck like to work in the shawdows away from public scurtiny. It is part of the I am Littlejohn and Mack, The dayton schools is my own private playground. I do not care what the people think. You are all stupid anyway. Don’t let them do it Joe. We depend on you too Scott for the accurate reporting on this. Even if you may personlaly like these Board members and their cronies.By Scott Elliott
November 11, 2006 11:01 AM | Link to this
Just to be clear, my conversation with Joe only surrounded the question of whether it was fair to characterize an offer to the teachers in these talks as the “board’s” offer. Joe’s discontent with the board’s approach to managing the district (which I wrote about in a blog post recently) is a seperate issue. My “splitting hairs” comment related only to the question of wording in my story.By Charterschool Hater
November 11, 2006 10:41 AM | Link to this
BRAVO TO JOE LACEY!! Even if some of you on this blog doi not appreciate Joe for him wnating to do the peoples bidding by staying informed about what is going on I do. YOu are doing the job I thought you would do when I and the dayton electorate voted you in. Keep asking questions. The keep your head in the sand and let the adminstation make all the decisions without any board oversight is the main reason 1) DPS children don’t learn as well as others in the state, and 2) We are broke while Percy and Gail while not wanting to question anything that Percy and his goons do, stuff themselves with food paid for by Dayton tax payers. I for one am tired of all this waste. You keep up the good work Joe and THANK YOU!!n One more thing to the Joe bashers. It is not only his right to question everything. It is his obligation to the taxpayers to do so. To call that petty or spltting hairs is a bit unfair. He is doing his job and I for one as a Dayton Taxpayer wish more of our so called public servants would do so. Keep asking Joe.By AnneL
November 10, 2006 11:46 PM | Link to this
MJ, of course we shouldn’t cut all of the administrators. Many of them are working hard and really care about our children. Dayton Driver did an excellent job of putting the frustrations into words, though. I do not have ten children in my classroom. I have 30. The children are tightly packed in my room and they need and deserve more one-on-one attention than I can possibly give to them in one day. I literally call in my parents and they, God Bless Them!, come in some days to help. I have children whose parents have to go in to work at the same time their children get out of school, so these children don’t have a person to read with them… at nights. The parents struggle to keep cars running, so in addition to pencils, paper, books to read, and backpacks, I buy them shirts, sweaters and pants. I try to do everything that I can for them. I am in the position to see daily how hard these parents are already working. I think that their children deserve the BEST. I would be willing to go door-to-door to support a levy if I thought it would help the kids. I will not - however - keep silent and work to help pass a levy that would make already struggling parents have to pay more if it is just going to go for new computers downtown. Give the CHILDREN THE LAPTOPS AND NEW MEDIA. PLEASE this is why we are here. If they cut teachers and I get even more children in my class, okay, I can handle the load. The Students CANNOT handle getting less of my time! Old Prof, first of all, it was reproted incorrectly, we did not get 4% annual raises. You keep coming back to $, aren’t you reading our words? It is not about money for everyone. Is money so important to some people that they just can’t see past it? I don’t want a raise - keep the money - a raise would just make me, as a teacher, look greedy to many people. My paycheck is adequate. The money I spend on my students is my choice, and I am happy that I am able to take care of my own children and still am able to help out some of my students. Doing this job is personally rewarding, but this job comes with certain responsibilties. I could easily sit back and feel bad that our children are not getting all that they really deserve, or I could at least be one of the voices trying to stop it. The DPS children have little enough, why aren’t more people fighting for them? Why does this keep going in other directions? Why do these children take a backseat to plush offices and WHY AREN’T MORE PEOPLE ANGRY ABOUT THIS?! I do not understand. Joe, other bloggers are right,let us know how, and we will back you.By mla
November 10, 2006 11:00 PM | Link to this
Wait! I just wanted to make sure that you are trying to clarify an issue, that when it comes down to it, does not really matter all that much? No wonder the district is in so much trouble! And by the way Scott, you don’t need to tell anyone that you already have a good working relationship with members of the Board….the public already knows that (or, at least the public that is clued in). Duh! Why don’t you deliver us some real news for once Scott? Why don’t you talk to parents and students of DPS and lay it out there for once!?This just goes to show the mediocrity of the DDN and some of its writers! As the old saying goes, “Say it don’t spray it…we want the news, not the weather!”By lou
November 10, 2006 6:55 PM | Link to this
MJ, the answer is you reorganize. I am sure a lot of these position can be put back in the schools. That would increase the number of school level administrators. It does not take all that we have. We are inefficient. A school level request takes entirely too long because it has to go to many desks. Look around at how other districts do it. How many associate director do we need? I do not beleive that we need all we have.By Oldprof
November 10, 2006 5:55 PM | Link to this
Hm. Tell me this, Dayton Teachers/Bus Drivers/others posting on this blog. It’s my understanding that the last DEA contract had 4% annual raises and relatively stable HC costs. Was Gail Littlejohn or Percy Mack a false Machiavelli when that contract was approved? I hear the DEA negotiating team saying that they are returning to the table and they have not yet said that anyone is acting in bad faith—does someone here know more about what’s going on in the room than the negotiators? I have been unflinchingly critical of board members from Huber Heights who don’t have professionalism in their public statements; I think teachers might be held to a lower standard where that’s concerned, but after a while people need to put anger aside, identify the root cause of these problems, and start working to fix it—like ‘em or hate ‘em, this set of board members and administrators and their AUTHORIZEDBy MJ
November 10, 2006 5:38 PM | Link to this
Please Ann L, If we cut all of the administrators who are addressing the myriad of student and staff needs it would significantly reduce our ability to help students and teachers. I understand that you and most citizens do not know just how many administrators have been cut already. Their duties have been added to those remaining. Additionally, the board has cut the administrative secretarial support, including in the office of the superintendent. The district’s ability to be effective in all of the areas that support student achievement is continously being erroded while we pretend that laying off 10 to 20 administrators will solve our budget problems. Get real. The district is over-staffed by teachers in accordance with the teacher contract and its pupil/teacher ratio because the distribution of students to teachers thoughout the buildings. Many teachers have as few as 10 students in their classrooms while some classrooms are full. Gail Littlejohn was right in saying that the district should have put on a levy years ago. It is crazy to not seek additional operational dollars when the cost of everything has gone up in price since 1992. The lack of levy dollars and the lack of state funding IS your real problem. The Board asked the staff to produce and they did. And there is no money to reward that achievement. And It has been shameful to expect the staff to continue to fund the district’s operational expenses out of their pockets. The Board should put on a levy tomorrow. And any employee stupid enough to not support the levy should be smart enough to keep the mouth closed. It is however,past time for the board, the administrators and the teachers to stop picking at each other and realize that DPS staff, all of you, including teachers administrators, Board members and parents work harder that schools staff ANYWHERE! PLEASE “QUIT HATIN’ ON EACH OTHER” and solve this problem!By Joe Lacey
November 10, 2006 4:12 PM | Link to this
You can say that it’s splitting hairs but the simple fact is that I first saw that proposal Monday, Nov. 6. As a board, we did not choose a negotiating team and/or give that team parameters to negotiate under. These were administrative decisions and if you wish you can tie anything that Dr. Mack does to the board through the fact that the board has hired Dr. Mack. I don’t know when his contract was last renewed but I know I wasn’t a board member then. You could just as easily describe actions of a corporate CEO as those of the board of directors. It’s just not accurate. Upon my request, the board was briefed on negotiations about a month or so ago in executive session. They informed us of what they were doing. They neither requested nor received any board approval for what they were doing. Some board members may have had more interaction with the negotiating team but if they did they were not acting with board authority. This is simply the way the board chose to operate under the “reform” plan chosen four years ago. It is a governance model that gives administration a lot of leeway although in practice some board members are not always following the model. You may say that it’s silly that I don’t care to be tied to specific decisions until I’ve had a say in those decisions. I say that it’s just a simple fact. It’s the administration’s proposal.By daytondriver
November 10, 2006 3:28 PM | Link to this
Scott, speaking as a board member who will ultimately be a part of a team that has THE final say of approval of any budget, Joe is certainly factually correct, and not in any way wrong to state what he did or how he did. Thank goodness we have Joe Lacy being vocal and telling it like he knows it to be, because the corporcratic style that “Littlejohn and the Johnettes” (best and most hilarious satirical bit to come out of all of this) is anything but about keeping it real. People refer to punishment as what some of the BOE, and their administration cronies do once the political firestorm of contract negotiations die down. The paper doesn’t cover this day-to-day side of the poltiics of DPS (instead, deferring to the top-down style of corporate reporting) wherein’ most stories emanate from the public relations side of the organization: Jill Moberly’s office. You should watch VERY CLOSELY the teachers who are vocal and public about their anti-board stance, and watch their incidences of discipline increase exponentially once this political storm has passed. The same goes for strong union leaders in DPS. They are targets for on-the-job harrassment and intimidation when they should be treated like citizens doing nothing more than taking advantage of their rights as free citizens. Littlejohn gets so much flack for her personal style, because her public personae is one of a member of the burgeouis American corporate upper class (which is exactly what she is). It is this same class of people who run the board and administration of DPS. In in a town where lots of children come to school often unfed and ill-kept, the mere idea that any human being would be eager to participate in being on any rung of any class system other than the class of the human race, is despicable and unthinkingly evil to me personally. Because when you break it down, Percy Mack, Gail Littlejohn, and the rest at 115 Ludlow, do less for the lives of children of DPS than the school janitor. They are better than noone else. We were all on this hellride called planet Earth together merely by circumstance at this point in history. Gail Littlejohn’s poop smells REAL bad, just like everyone elses. Keep up the good fight Joe and we’ll back you to the end of the Earth and have about three more like-minded souls on the ballot for the next DPS BOE election.By Rachael
November 10, 2006 2:07 PM | Link to this
Mr. Lacey’s comment does illustrate a major problem: communication. Better communication among all the groups—administration, BOE, negotiating committee, teachers—would certainly eleviate some tension and misunderstanding.By Troubled in Dayton
November 10, 2006 2:07 PM | Link to this
My apologies Joe! That sounded like some of the comments I have complained about in these blogs. It is splitting hairs though and seems a little silly to make that statement. Each side has a representative and I think most understand that role.By Scott Elliott
November 10, 2006 1:34 PM | Link to this
I don’t understand your comment about punishment, DPS grad. This is a forum for discussion. That’s what we’re doing. I have a good working relationship with Joe, who posts here often, even when we disagree over the wording in DDN stories.By dpsgrad
November 10, 2006 1:06 PM | Link to this
Joe - Wow, on several levels. Among them - that took guts. I was going to say that you will be punished, including by the DDN, but that already started in the time it took to get a sandwich. It’s about the “in gang” mentality, Scott - just like in high school.By Troubled in Dayton
November 10, 2006 1:05 PM | Link to this
My goodness! I see one board member that needs to be voted out of a job right away of that’s what he wants to argue about. You shouldn’t have had to explain that to a board member Scott. I think everyone else understands what was being said even if the board member doesn’t.By Scott Elliott
November 10, 2006 12:35 PM | Link to this
Joe, you’re really splitting hairs. The negotiations for a labor contract are fundamentally between the school board and the teachers’ union. The talks are actually executed by negotiating teams empowered by those two bodies to negotiate on their behalf. In the end, it’s the board as a whole and the union membership as a whole that must agree or not to the deal. I think people understand that labor talks between the “board” and the “union” do not involve all the board members and al the union members in one room. And they also understand an offer by one side or the other is made by their negotiators but represents the position of that side at that moment, be it union or school board.By Joe Lacey
November 10, 2006 10:54 AM | Link to this
To say “the board proposed a one-time payout” is incorrect. I had no such proposal brought to me as a board member. This is an administrative proposal. If any board members were involved they were not acting under board approval.By lou
November 10, 2006 5:16 AM | Link to this
As teachers we need to rally for the levy. Let the public decide. Regardless what happens with our contract.By AnneL
November 9, 2006 9:45 PM | Link to this
Yes, thanks, Scott, it is nice to see both sides with a voice. Maybe the DEA will start trying to communicate effectively with the media. So how would everyone feel about a compromise? We take the 1%, on a ONE YEAR contract, WITHOUT losing our teacher workdays. Then we make it clear that the cuts need to come from downtown, not from our buildings. If we see otherwise, we rally AGAINST a levy. Our parents really do not need to spend more money for the schools when it is all going to fill downtown offices.By lou
November 9, 2006 7:37 PM | Link to this
Great, if we can wiggle it, let’s go it and get back to teaching being the focus.By Troubled in Dayton
November 9, 2006 3:13 PM | Link to this
Very informative! And without the BS and anger. Thanks for posting.