Follow the Money

This past April, The Capistrano School District was the site of a teacher strike. The strike lasted three days, and as you can guess, cost a lot of money in terms of security and substitute fees.

Interestingly, the district ended up saving more than they spent, resulting in 1.7 million dollars extra from salaries that were docked from striking teachers paychecks.

In addition to the three days of instruction that were essentially lost due to the strike, the schools were also closed for another three days in the school year. These "furlough" days were intended to save money.

Here's the rub: instead of using that $1.7 million to restore the days lost to furlough, as the parents and teacher's union requested, the district opted to put that money toward next year's budget gap.

Sigh.....

My favorite part of the article in the Orange County Register about this is the quote from the district representative near the end of the article. He assures everyone that it's not about "disliking anyone" and that it's a "financial reality." One of the things I always deplored about the business world is that people would take these reprehensible actions that hurt other people and then justified it by saying "it's just business." So...kids losing six days of instruction is nothing personal. Sorry kids, we just can't afford to educate you properly.

Article here: http://http://www.ocregister.com/news/teachers-80251-ocprint-district-school.html