School employee unions siphon untold millions from school budgets
Florida’s State Board of Education is pressuring Gov. Rick Scott and state lawmakers to increase K-12 spending by 1.88 percent per student, under the faulty assumption that the state’s public education system is underfunded.
The real problem facing Florida’s public schools is that too many K-12 dollars are wasted on things that don’t benefit the state’s school children at all.
Consider Miami-Dade County Schools, the largest school district in Florida. According to the district’s website, every conceivable school employee belongs to a labor union that is governed by a collective bargaining contract. Those contracts stipulate that employees receive automatic, annual pay raises, free or low-cost health insurance, and numerous other expensive perks which siphon untold millions out of the classroom and into union members’ pockets.
For example, the contract for the Dade County School Maintenance Employee Committee has a long list of job titles and the required salary for each. Among the many jobs listed is a “Painter” ($50,291 salary), a “Pipefitter – Gas Systems II” ($58,177 salary), and a “Temp. Insulation Worker” ($48,001 salary). Additionally, the contract appears to require that employees receive an annual two percent raise, along with generous health insurance benefits.
But the problem extends far beyond Miami-Dade schools; many Florida school districts have a similar number of school employee unions. Florida’s taxpayers should be asking why their schools have scads of non-instructional employees on the payroll when that work could be outsourced to private companies, for a fraction of the cost.
That would free up a bunch of money that schools could then spend in the classroom educating students. As it currently stands, Florida’s school employee unions have turned public education into their private financial playground, ensuring that the adult workers are getting automatic pay raises, retirement bonuses, lavish benefits, and anything else they can sneak into their contracts. Then the State Board of Education and the teachers unions complain to lawmakers and taxpayers that they don’t have enough money to properly educate children. That’s nonsense.
What’s needed is for Florida’s taxpayers to hold the line and demand accountability from their local school officials. Lawmakers should refuse to increase per-pupil spending until the schools demonstrate that they can spend responsibly.
It’s time to hold the special interests accountable.
It’s time to end the school employee union racket.
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