10 Years Ago

Haines teachers reject negotiated contract offer

By an 80 percent margin, Haines Borough teachers last week voted to reject a compensation proposal negotiated between union representatives and the school district.

The borough school board had better luck with non-teaching employees, approving a two-year contract with those workers Tuesday that includes about a 5 percent raise for most workers. It will cost the district $130,400 total over the next two years.

Haines Education Association President Lisa Andriesen said the district’s offer to adjust the teachers’ pay scale didn’t do enough to incentivize teachers to stay here after a few years.

“The kinds of changes they proposed didn’t give an incentive for teachers to stay a long time, and we know that’s the best for kids, to have long-term teachers,” Andriesen said.

Andriesen said teachers also have been frustrated during negotiations in previous years when district officials said the district didn’t have money for increases to teachers’ pay schedule, only to discover later that the district had a surplus.

“They have all this money again this year. We feel we’re trying to do the best for the district, including winning awards, but the (budget) numbers are never accurate,” Andriesen said.

In a letter to the school board Friday, Andriesen also said the district’s offer “does little to keep up with inflation” and “devalues the educational achievements, experience and contributions to the school and community they have made over the years.”

Andriesen was not part of the staff’s negotiating team that included teachers Sophia Armstrong, Patty Brown and Darwin Feakes.

School board president Anne Marie Palmieri said the rejection was “something that happens” and that the district has only heard general statements on what the proposal lacked. “Teams representing the teachers and the district have been negotiating for three months over this. There’s been a significant back and forth on all aspects of the contract.”

Palmieri and Andriesen declined to provide the cost to the district of the rejected offer.

The two negotiating teams have been meeting since spring on terms of a new, two-year contract. “Everything was on the table” including wages, benefits, professional development and training, NEA’s Andriesen said.

On average, Haines teacher pay is in the bottom half for pay among districts statewide, Andriesen said.

Three years ago, teachers agreed to forgo a pay raise, Andriesen said. Two years ago, they accepted a one-time, “stipend” instead of changes to the pay schedule.

The teachers’ contract includes a clause that they won’t strike. If negotiations reach a stalemate, a mediator would be brought in, Andriesen said. “We’ll go back to the table and say, ‘This is the strong feeling from the staff. What can we do to tweak that proposal?’”

In some previous years, contract talks have extended into August.

The agreement with 24 part-time and full-time “classified” employees includes increasing personal leave days to as many as four, depending on experience, and increasing to $800 from $350 a reimbursement for continuing education.

Under the agreement, the district would cover half of any increase in employees’ health insurance costs during the next two years.

The agreement doesn’t cover district secretary Ashley Sage, district bookkeeper Judy Erekson or food service manager Brandi Stickler. The school board voted Tuesday to accept the agreement without comment or explanation.

25 Years Ago

Scott wins state teaching award

Haines High School teacher Stephanie Scott has been named recipient of one of the state’s top teacher awards.

Scott received the 2000 Christa McAuliffe fellowship for her proposal to develop a series of performance assessments to help determine if students are on track to pass reading and writing portions of the Alaska High School Graduation Qualifying Examination.

Scott, who’s taught special education in Haines since 1993, will use the a portion of the fellowship’s $45,000 cash award to work on the project, which she said will benefit students and school districts around the state.

“I’d do it anyway, even if I didn’t get the grant. I feel very strongly about my responsibility to teach kids what they need to pass the test… We’re asking the kids to take this high-stakes exam and it’s possible we’re not teaching them what they need.”

Starting in 2002, Alaska high school students must pass the exam to get a diploma. Scott’s project will be to adapt a commonly used learning measure called functional assessment to the test requirements, to enable teachers to tell if their students are learning what they need to graduate.

She will develop a series of “probes”– 108 short exercises focusing on specific reading and writing skills to measure student progress. Results will reveal where improvement is needed.

“The student takes the probe and the teacher should be able to see from that what they need to teach. When the student takes the second probe, that will indicate how well they’ve learned.”

Scott said the approach will enable teachers and students to see progress by taking small steps. “It’s not a cookbook, it’s a tool to help kids learn more efficiently. Kids will be able to see their improvements. They can chart their progress and teachers can analyze the results easily.”

In awarding the grant, Alaska Department of Education and Early Development commissioner Rick Cross said Scott’s project augments state efforts to improve education. “Her project will directly support our efforts to make sure every student has the skills to pass the high school exam. Her knowledge and experience will provide a rich resource for students and teachers in our state,” Cross wrote in a press release.

Haines school superintendent Ron Erickson said Scott deserves the honor. “It’s just a really great thing. She’s a very deserving teacher and she’ll make good on the fellowship.”

Work on the project begins this summer. Erickson said Scott will take some time away from classroom teaching next year to complete the work. A portion of the fellowship grant will go to the school district to hire a part-time replacement for Scott. The program will be tried on Haines School District students.

Scott, 53, works with 30 to 35 students requiring special instruction. She holds a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University and a master’s degree from Temple University. She has 15 years classroom experience, starting in 1971 as a teacher for the deaf.

The Christa McAuliffe Fellowship is named for the teacher killed in the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster. The mission of the congressionally funded program is to provide funding for experienced teachers to develop improvements to their state’s education systems, enhance their professional skills and improve classroom instruction.

50 Years Ago

Chilkat Valley Muse, Editorial

By Ray Menaker

We heard two things this week that we’d like to share with you.

On Tuesday we listened for several hours while an excellent turnout of the Haines citizenry talked about the school budget and the condition of the local, state and national economy—and the effects of that economy on the budget.

“A dollar earned for a dollar paid” was the slogan, and many seemed to feel that their major concern was wise use of tax money. Others seemed to feel that regardless of how wisely the money is spent, there just isn’t enough of it to go around, and that the time for “retrenchment” is upon us. Nearly everyone agreed that taxes are high, and some felt that school taxes shouldn’t go higher since the city dwellers will possibly have an increase in city taxes to contend with this year.

Then, on Wednesday, we listened to a news report on the evacuation of both U.S. and South Vietnamese from Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City as it has been renamed by its new regime). Apparently educated and wealthy Vietnamese were airlifted to waiting U.S. ships, and are being sent to U.S. military installations and eventually to the U.S. A number of South Vietnamese military pilots took their helicopters out to waiting U.S. ships, and some landed on them. However, after one landed without permission, and got tangled up with another chopper, landing was refused, and the pilots were told to ditch their ‘copters in the ocean. Pilots were picked up successfully from the ditched planes. Then, the South Vietnamese helicopters which had landed on the carriers were pushed over the side into the water to make room for the normal complement of U.S. planes.

Now, those jettisoned helicopters were U.S.-made, tax-money-bought gifts to the government that had just been overthrown. The gasoline that powered them was part of the tax-money-bought U.S. military aid our government has sent for years and years and years.

Where’s that “dollar earned for a dollar paid?”

Perhaps the money spent on only one of those wasted helicopters would have paid for the whole 1975-76 school budget.

We are asked to spend our local tax money wisely and well, to make every dollar count. We agree. But it seems to us that if retrenchment needs to be done, then it is in the federal area that the funds need to be cut -particularly the military- and not at the local level.

Haines needs its streets maintained and improved; it needs better and more water and sewer lines; it needs port facilities; it needs parks; it needs many things that local people find it difficult to reach down into their pockets for. But if their money can be dumped off the side of an aircraft carrier into the sea, then we think it is time that things be done differently.

So…. we’d suggest that the cost of one helicopter be deducted by the people of this area from their federal income tax returns and be set aside and devoted to borough school and city budgets. You know, if we all did it, throughout the nation, there’d be a lot of revenue sharing which would go to the right places!

Food for thought:

According to the radio news reports, the first decree of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam after taking up the reins of government in Saigon was to prohibit prostitution and dance halls. 

At present, there is a bill in the state legislature to legalize prostitution in Alaska, with municipal consent.

Another thought:

Another radio news report about a week ago pointed out that South Vietnamese army personnel who had left their units, abandoned their uniforms, and given up the struggle were being evacuated as refugees rather than as deserters.

How about those soldiers who did the same thing a few years ago, who recognized the war for what it was and would have nothing to do with it, and left their units, abandoned their uniforms and gave up the struggle? Shouldn’t they, too, be treated as refugees rather than as deserters? After all, their uniforms were probably made by the same U.S. company, their military equipment was part of the same U.S. taxpayers’ largess–the only difference is that they wore the insignia of the U.S. Army rather than the army of South Vietnam. 

If our nation can give consideration to Vietnamese who pulled out of the battle, the least it could do is give such consideration to U.S. citizens who did the same.