Monday night there will be a vote of the Board of Directors to approve a “Retirement Incentive”… a bonus of $33,000 CASH to any teacher in the district with 30 years of teaching, if they will retire after this school year.  This payment is above and beyond what they’ll get for unused leave days and their pension.  Because it is past the date that is usually the "deadline" for such notification, they will vote to give an extension on the deadline to the last week of February.

This type of thing has been done before, usually when there’s a budget crunch.  Berwick boasts $13 million in its Fund Balance.  There will be a PSERS situation in 2012, but we’ve been budgeting MORE than required for several years to prepare for it (according to the Business Manager) and we ALSO paid off the “Six Million Dollar Bond” early.  This is much more than a budgetary move, but they won’t tell you the truth. 

Well, I’ll tell you.  A board member told me that there was an Executive Session last week and the board was told that there are at least 15 teachers in our district who are considered by the administration to be “substandard” teachers and that we need to make sure they are not teaching here next year.  The damage being done to students must be dire if they are willing to “pay them off” to leave.  My source says that many on the board will go along with this “incentive payment” because they feel it is imperative that these teachers are taken out of the classroom.  I think if things are that bad, they should be removed from the classroom NOW and without any incentive.  I know that it is the responsibility of the Principal and/or Assistant Principal to observe teachers and prepare an evaluation for them every year that they teach, so apparently some administrators have not been doing their jobs and need to be fired as well.  I say that if the administrators have done their jobs and documented this substandard performance, we can do this the RIGHT way without paying out in excess of half a million dollars.  Really, I’d rather see them pay out that much for legal fees that might emerge from the situation, than to see them pay this bribe.  

My source also feels that we shouldn’t have board members whose family members teach here or who belong to the teacher’s union.  I agree and have been very vocal about this for many years.  It’s a conflict of interest.  It’s too bad that the people in Berwick are willing to continue voting for these people anyway.  My source said they could not understand why the public is not showing up for any board meetings anymore.  I reminded them of the new directive of the board is that questions can be asked by the public, but if they really want an answer, they must be asked in writing on a “Right To Know Request” form.  If there will be no answers forthcoming at a meeting, why would anyone waste their time attending?  Monday night, you must DEMAND answers.

I don’t subscribe to the old “screw up, move up” mentality, but time and again the Berwick Area School District has employed this method of dealing with sub-standard employees.  When the situation gets to the breaking point, they are promoted to another “custom-made” position, or given a glowing recommendation and passed along to another unsuspecting school district, or given an obscene amount of money to “retire” before they had planned to. 

Go to the school board meeting on Monday night and tell them that this is NOT the way to run the school district.