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AFPE Members!
The following is AFPE's position on the current budget situation
and will be presented to the school board on Tuesday, May
15. As you know, the state has forced changes in the VRS contributions
and the county did not fully fund our budget, necessitating
some difficult decisions. The AFPE board and officers have
discussed the best way forward, considering the budget and
political realities FCPS is facing, and created our own recommendation.
With the reduced transfer and the state-mandated VRS changeover, we find ourselves in an unusual, but typically difficult, budget situation. Our recommendation maintains financial prudence while being aligned with the school board priorities and can be summed up in 4 simple steps. Please see my supplemental document for additional information.
1. Follow Dr. Dale’s recommendation to do the VRS change all at once and make the ERFC 2 percent switch.
2. Eliminate all line items from the April 30 budget recommendation that are not related to School Board Budget Priorities 1 and 2. The only remaining items would be “Extended Learning Time – Students” and “Custodial Salaries Increased to Market Rate.” This totals $15.5 million.
3. Keep the athletic fees, your number 9 budget priority, adding another $1.7 million.
4. This gives you $17.2 million to put toward market scale adjustment for all employees, nearly 1 percent or about $500 in take-home pay for an employee making $50,000 per year, because that is your own Number 2 budget priority.
To delay implementation of the VRS changeover is financially foolish. Doing it all at once costs $52.2 million. Doing 1 percent this year while giving teachers a 4 percent cola costs $80.1 million the first year alone, and $109 million total. That’s 50 percent more in the first year, necessitating more cuts to pay for it, and more than twice as much overall.
Dr. Dale and the administration have proven yet again that they have the right perspective when dealing with budget issues. Their proposal is fair to employees under the circumstances, which we all agree are quite difficult, but keeps the long-term health of FCPS in mind.
This board established its own budget priorities in March. Now you seem poised to abandon them – why? We could have a robust discussion about the priority list, but the list was established by you. It is not a list of campaign promises. It is time to stop the campaigning and start making the right, and often difficult, decisions. It would be easy to eliminate the athletic fees. It would be easy to give yourselves more staffing. It will be harder to do the right thing, which is to spare the employees from paying for those choices. That is what you are doing when you choose them over increasing pay. Employees would be the ones paying for those athletic fees and school board staff.
AFPE is all for balance in approaching the budget. The budget changes that came from the April 30 work session do not provide that balance. Employees deserve more than you are recommending. We essentially volunteered to receive no step or cola three years ago. Then two years ago, we received nothing once again in the worst budget year in recent memory. Last year, we moved in the right direction. This year, mandated VRS changes are making things difficult. Our recommendation provides a solution that both benefits employees modestly, but also adheres to the very priorities you set. In short:
• Our proposal treats all employees equally.
• Our proposal costs nothing above the current budget.
• Our proposal honors your established budget priorities.
• Our proposal deals with the current budget realities and difficulties.
• Our proposal would show employees you value them and fairly, if not fully, compensate them.
Thank you.
(Link to the school board budget priorities established at the April 30 work session: http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/8U6QQX6A2331/$file/Approved%20Budget%20Presentation.pdf. Slide 2 lists the budget priorities.)
Bretton Zinger
Master Journalism Educator
Chantilly High School Journalism and Film Study teacher
Adviser, The Purple Tide and Andromeda
President, Association of Fairfax Professional Educators
bretton.zinger@fcps.edu
AFPE Members!
For nearly two decades the Association of Fairfax Professional
Educators (AFPE) has provided support, professional development
grants and liability insurance to FCPS teachers, counselors,
social workers, psychologists, media specialists, SBTS, instructional
aides and administrators. As one of the professional organizations
acknowledged by FCPS, AFPE is at the table for any discussion
pertinent to pay and benefits.
AFPE is not associated with any state or national teachers'
union, and thus we can continue to keep our members' budgets
in mind with our very modest dues of just $80 per year, or
$8 per month for 10 months. With little overhead and no money
going to office rental or political action groups, or as dues
to national organizations, this "strictly for Fairfax"
group can channel our funds toward grants and reimbursements
for courses for our members. By being a part of AFPE, you
know that your dues directly contribute to educators and students
in our schools.
Please contact us if you have any questions or need further
information about AFPE. Just click on "Contact Info"
on the left.
Bretton Zinger
President -Association of Fairfax Professional Educators
Dear Members of the FCPS School Board,
For those of you who have been on the board, AFPE should need
no introduction. However, for those newly elected, I would
like to introduce you to the Association of Fairfax Professional
Educators – a professional organization that has been
serving FCPS employees for 22 years. We are the third of the
recognized employee organizations in FCPS, along with FEA
and FCFT.
Our membership of approximately 1,400 consists of teachers,
instructional assistants, counselors, librarians, SBTS, administrators,
and more, all focused on Fairfax County issues alone. We are
not affiliated with any state or national organization.
AFPE is invited to all county meetings having to do with benefits
and compensation and serves on such committees as the Working
Conditions Survey and Evaluation Task force.
All of our board members are full-time FCPS educators. We
keep our overhead low by having just one paid administrative
assistant. Because we do not have state or national financial
obligations, we have modest dues of $80 per year. All of our
funds are redirected to employees’ professional development,
including tuition reimbursement, as well as to professional
liability insurance.
When you make your deliberations, please keep in mind that
AFPE does have an important voice in Fairfax County and in
Virginia, a right-to-work state.
Additionally, I am writing to you today to speak specifically
about some of the current issues you are facing, including
those related to the budget.
• It is AFPE’s position that everything should
be considered “on the table” with the exception
of any component of teacher compensation and items related
to the safety and security of students. I have no doubt that
if teacher compensation is reduced in any way from the proposed
budget, morale will go from quite low to below rock bottom.
• As such, please keep in mind that teacher compensation
is much more than just steps and market scale COLA adjustments.
Coaching, summer school, tuition reimbursement, extended time
contracts, and more are part and parcel of compensation packages,
and when these things are reduced or eliminated, you are taking
money from employees’ pockets.
• Perhaps the biggest component of our compensation
other than pay and benefits is our time. The board needs to
value that more. During the recent pay freeze, class sizes
increased enormously. Many secondary teachers now have 30
more students to teach per year than they did four years ago.
New programs added substantially more time to the teacher
workload. Obviously, much of that work is done, by necessity,
outside of contract time, which already was overloaded.
• Board members have recently made several proposals
that would increase the budget without identifying any corresponding
reductions. It is a given that the county board of supervisors
will not approve a transfer increase greater than the request,
and it possibly will be lower. How will these proposals be
paid for?
• When pay was frozen for two years, some programs were
“saved” due to advocacy by parent groups and school
board members. Please realize that when this happened, educators
were, by default, paying for those programs. The programs
were chosen to be saved in lieu of additional teacher compensation.
• Please directly communicate with your employees. Few
were aware of the proposal to add honors classes until the
motion had passed and teachers were about to hand out course
selection books, which, of course, did not have the up-to-date
changes. As a result, students and parents are not getting
consistent information.
• Please consult with those who will be implementing
your directives about the best way forward. This was not done
with regard to the honors courses.
• When you survey employees – do not just rely
on data from the two unions. Use Survey Monkey for all employees
as most are not represented by any organization. This was
especially glaring when school board members apparently accepted
the statistics of FCFT’s survey of 378 members regarding
honors courses to be representative of the county overall.
Plus, more than half of those respondents were not high school
teachers. If you had surveyed all employees, especially history
and English teachers, you might have received quite different
information.
• When you take the advice of advocacy groups, keep
in mind that those students who are the poorest and less able
do not have anyone organized on their behalf, and decisions
should be for all students and not for just special interest
groups.
• Take care to not disparage the superintendent and
staff in public meetings. It destroys your credibility as
a fair and balanced board.
• Do not buddy up with the board of supervisors thinking
you will get the dollars to fund your pet projects. You show
your bargaining cards early, and then we all lose.
• Your most valuable assets are your teachers. Show
you value them by seeking their input on proposals, trusting
their educational judgment and expertise, and advocating strongly
in public and private for them. The closer employees are to
the classroom, the bigger impact they have on students.
Thank you for your time and consideration of our issues. The
Association of Fairfax Professional Educators, like all the
school board members, is committed to providing the best education
for all FCPS students.
Please do not hesitate to contact me for input on any topic,
no matter how small. As all of our officers are working educators,
meeting during the school day is quite difficult. If you would
like to visit Chantilly High School, I’d love to meet
you to chat and show you all we have to offer. If an evening
meeting is preferred, please let me know.
A hard copy of this letter should be arriving shortly. Thank
you again.
Sincerely,
Bretton Zinger
Master Journalism Educator
Chantilly High School Journalism and Film Study teacher
Adviser, The Purple Tide and Andromeda
President, Association of Fairfax Professional Educators
bretton.zinger@fcps.edu
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