Why you should care about Hinsdale. Part two.

If you regularly read this blog you know about what is going on in Hinsdale, District 86. 

HInsdale is a comfortable Chicago suburban town with a high school district that has always had a good reputation as a place to teach and send your children.

Then in the last election, a small turnout of voters led to the election of some radical anti-union board members which gave them a majority of seats on the board.

These radical right-wing board members have three goals that they have pursued in contract bargaining.

One was to cut the compensation package that all teachers receive. In particular they want to drive the higher paid senior, experienced, veteran teachers out of the district.

They want to de-professionalize their teaching staff, creating a system in which curriculum is strictly defined and actual teaching skill is unnecessary.

And in order to do this they want to bust the union.

This is the corporate reform agenda in practice. It is the Koch brothers agenda. The Battle for Hinsdale is so much more than a typical case of contract bargaining.

It is about what kind of schools Hinsdale, and all of us, will have. 

The board has demanded that the union accept a contract in which there will be no movement on the salary schedule for the length of the contract.

No yearly step increases. No lane movement for professional growth. They have offered a small  cost of living increase and a one-time merit bonus.

A Hinsdale D86 teacher would see no salary increase in real dollars for the length of the contract (although this board wants this model to be made permanent) and with increased health benefit costs, their actual compensation will decline.

Over time, they want to do away with a salary schedule entirely.

“Not even lane movement for professional growth,” I asked?

“They don’t care if you earn a PhD from Harvard. They won’t pay you for it,” I was told.

Of course, why should they pay a teacher for a Harvard degree when they only want people who can follow a script and proctor a test?

This is the national corporate school agenda in practice. The board’s problem is that it neighboring districts don’t work like that and the good teachers of Hinsdale will flee and new teachers won’t come.

However, the damage will be done to Hinsdale District 86.

The crazies will destroy what their community has been willing to pay for and could afford to build and the one that their teachers have created.

For the board, it is like the infamous statement of the general in Vietnam who claimed he had to destroy a village in order to save it.