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The majority of them have outlived their usefulness, promote mediocrity, and penalize hard working individuals who wish to advance their careers in whatever business entity they are working in.
This is a typical union tactic-draw attention to the cause, no matter what the disruption. However, what the unions have failed to realize over the years is that stunts such as this only irritate the very people whose support they are looking for.
At least they have jobs.....
:-)
By the way, did you see the facts the other day on the Salem fiasco? I'm not at all trying to say that character doesn't deserve all he's going to get, or should get, but the other side of the story is that before he lied about almost everything,financial, teacher staffing in Salem was about 50% of the maximum pupil /teacher ratio in the contract. This tells me that Salem was employing more teachers than were needed to give the students a good education. The contract called for roughly 28-30 students per teacher and although most school administrators and parents would push for as low as ratio as they could get, 28-30 was about the normal ratio when I was going to public schools in a good town and of course 50+ years ago. I don't know of anyone I went to school with who was poorly educated unless they didn't want to learn.
I have been following the school financial disaster, also. I did read that they are expecting class sizes of 28-30. I have to admit I was surprised to hear how small the class sizes in Salem were before the u-no-what hit the fan.
On a personal note, we are in the process of looking at high schools for our daughter, and were seriously considering the honors program at Salem High. Now, though, we are pretty set on our second choice, Bishop Fenwick. Although we have lived in Salem for many years, neither of us are originally from Salem. Our concern is not so much class size, but the ability of the school department to run the schools and make smart financial decisions. At this point, we don't feel they can do that. To have let themselves be blindsided by this individual, Bruce Guy, doesn't instill much confidence in us. Especially since it appears this is not his first offense and that there were warning signs.
Bruce Guy should be prosecuted to the full extent that the law permits.
His reference to "proposed level of support" is presumably the estimated school budget which would be available if voters approve a balanced FY09 budget within the constraints of Proposition 2 1/2. If so, then the evil-doers must be the voters of Andover, i.e., the people paying his salary. The total budget, and total number of full-time equivalent employees in the Andover schools has increased in each of the past four years - is this the 'neglect' that he is referring to? Andover is consistently ranked among the finest school districts in the state, with several awards for excellence - and this is a "crisis"? I suspect there are many towns in the state who would be very pleased to have such a crisis to deal with.