Griffin Sandler(pictured), a seventh-grader at Walsh Intermediate School, was the first to walk up to the podium. He was upset. He told Branford’s Board of Finance that he wanted all 80-plus teachers who had been given pink slips to stay on. If they leave, Griffin told the adults present, their loss would have an impact not only on teaching but on after-school programs.
He made a pitch for his language arts teacher who had helped him out a lot. He was concerned about his mom, Lisa Sandler, a math teacher at the high school He said she was “in danger of losing her job because of the budget. She is a fair and dedicated teacher…”
He ended to applause, especially from his dad, Robin Sandler, a former town counsel.
Griffin and a troup of fellow students played starring roles at a Branford Board of Finance budget hearing — staged in a political fairy tale that pulled on heartstrings but deviated, and even misrepresented, the real-life script unfolding in the town. They were pleading for the jobs that no one ever intended to eliminate.Thursday night’s budget hearing had been switched to Walsh Intermediate School in anticipation of a large turnout. More than 100 parents, teachers, students and others showed up. The Board of Finance (pictured) and top town and education officials were seated on stage against a backdrop for the play Cinderella, to be performed next week.
As the clock neared midnight, the real drama began as Griffin and three other concerned students begged the finance board not to drop their teachers from the payroll. Last month the Board of Education directed the schools superintendent to notify more than 80 teachers that they would be losing their jobs. Click here to read the story of the pink slip cuts. Two board members, Peter Berdon and Michael Kraus, voted against deploying the pink slips.
One senior at Branford High praised her biology teacher and the non-tenured staff overall. Another senior praised his technology teachers, who were also given pink slips.
Adopting the jargon of the day, he said: “When you determine which way the budget ends up swinging, I do hope you will be mindful of the goal to enhance 21st century learning because a lot of our non-tenured teachers are integral to the achievement of that goal.”
Finally there was Megan Tobin, another senior, who serves as an intern helping a teacher at Walsh. She, too, wants to be a teacher, she said. But now she is not sure.
“I want to go into education,” she said.“However, talking with the teachers and seeing how nervous they are about what is going to be happening, well I am kind of reconsidering…”
Their speeches were poignant and all were applauded. But this was painful to watch because these kids had been used as pawns by educators who should know better.
Instead of waiting until the April 1 deadline to inform the non-certified staff of layoffs for next year, the Board of Education acted weeks before. If the idea was to rile people up, they succeeded. The board anticipated parents and teachers would turn out to press the finance board to keep teachers on.
The pink slip debacle has created havoc in the schools among teachers and students. But the mind-boggling decision to do it this way was self-imposed by a majority of Board of Education members. In the past, the Board of Education has waited until the finance board acted before deciding on sending pink slips. If they had followed the same course, they would have had eight days from the time the finance board acts on Monday, March 23 to send out the April 1 notices.
The Board of Education should be held accountable for creating a situation that has led to such anxiety in the school system. The pink slips were a red herring, aimed at diverting attention from the main issues: the failure of the teachers union to move an inch toward concessions in a contract the Board and the Representative Town Meeting should never have approved in the first place and the failure of the Board of Education to reduce its budget further.
The current proposed school budget stands at $47.1 million, a 2.9 percent increase, better than its last try of $47.3 million or a 3.8 percent increase but not there yet. The school budget accounts for more than half of the projected $89.5 million town budget. But the final numbers are still to be determined by the town’s finance board and the RTM.
Board of Education Chairman Frank Carrano (pictured) did tell the audience that a majority of the teacher’s pink slips would be rescinded. Indeed, this second education budget proposal released yesterday, like the first issued in January, lists the same 12.5 certified teachers and 5.13 non certified personnel as potentially laid off. Nowhere does this budget show 80 teachers losing their jobs. Carrano now said that through retirements and attrition “we hope as few as possible” will be laid off.
This message was not conveyed to the students, certainly not the ones who spoke. Carrano, former head of the teachers union in New Haven, conceded at the end of the long evening that “this has been a difficult process for our non-tenured teachers. It has been agonizing for many of them. It has been a difficult process for us at the Board of Ed to reconcile our traditional role as supporting young teachers at the same time recognizing the situation facing with the economy. For many of us as board members this has been really, really difficult.”
Well, we ask, who brought on this agony? The reality is that 80-plus teachers were never on the chopping block, but a majority of the Board of Education made it seem that way.
After the meeting, Second Selectman Fran Walsh, once the principal of the school that bears his name, was on his way out when he was asked his view of using student speakers in this way.
“They performed very well,” he said. “They were fine. But they shouldn’t have used the kids that way,” he said.
Amen.###