Rescuing Financially Imperiled Schools

Remember how teachers were saying last spring that the Wisconsin legislators and Governor Scott Walker were going to devastate kids' education by curbing teachers' right to collective bargaining? Well, Byron York at The Washington Examiner finds that, at least for one Wisconsin public school, what the legislature and Walker did has been a blessing:

The Kaukauna School District, in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin near Appleton, has about 4,200 students and about 400 employees. It has struggled in recent times and this year faced a deficit of $400,000. But after the law went into effect, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, school officials put in place new policies they estimate will turn that $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. And it's all because of the very provisions that union leaders predicted would be disastrous.

In the past, teachers and other staff at Kaukauna were required to pay 10 percent of the cost of their health insurance coverage and none of their pension costs. Now, they'll pay 12.6 percent of the cost of their coverage (still well below rates in much of the private sector) and also contribute 5.8 percent of salary to their pensions. The changes will save the school board an estimated $1.2 million this year, according to board President Todd Arnoldussen.

But that's only part of the story. Under previous bargaining agreements the district was forced to purchase insurance from a company, WEA Trust, created by the teachers union. This year that insurance vendor had informed the district that premiums were going up:

Now, the collective bargaining agreement is gone, and the school district is free to shop around for coverage. And all of a sudden, WEA Trust has changed its position. "With these changes, the schools could go out for bids, and lo and behold, WEA Trust said, 'We can match the lowest bid,'" says Republican state Rep. Jim Steineke, who represents the area and supports the Walker changes. At least for the moment, Kaukauna is staying with WEA Trust, but saving substantial amounts of money.

There's more:

Then there are work rules. "In the collective bargaining agreement, high school teachers only had to teach five periods a day, out of seven," says Arnoldussen. "Now, they're going to teach six." In addition, the collective bargaining agreement specified that teachers had to be in the school 37 1/2 hours a week. Now, it will be 40 hours.

The changes mean Kaukauna can reduce the size of its classes -- from 31 students to 26 students in high school and from 26 students to 23 students in elementary school. In addition, there will be more teacher time for one-on-one sessions with troubled students. Those changes would not have been possible without the much-maligned changes in collective bargaining.

Teachers' salaries will stay "relatively the same," Arnoldussen says, except for higher pension and health care payments.....[T]he money saved will be used to hire a few more teachers and institute merit pay.

None of the predictions of educational disaster that would follow having the public trough yanked away from public employees unions have yet come to pass, and in at least one school district so far, the kids are obvious beneficiaries.

Actually, it was pretty obvious all along to everyone but union leaders and their lackeys in the Wisconsin media and legislature that that would be the case.