Wisconsin budget cuts: unhealthy to teachers and children

Members of this community are well aware of the successful effort this spring in Wisconsin, by the GOP-majority state legislature and Gov. Scott Walker, to gut collective bargaining rights.

Now, with no vehicle to combat them, teachers are watching as local school boards, crippled by budget cuts magnified by newly-enacted limits on levying taxes, are going after teacher benefits. Some districts are going so far as to limit the number of days that teachers can call in sick before having to pay out of pocket:

At least some Wisconsin school boards are cutting the amount of sick leave for teachers. With the new limits on collective bargaining, unions no longer have a say over those benefits in districts where contracts expired on June 30th. School officials say they need to cut what they can, to make up for big losses in state aid and new limits on raising property taxes. The Elmbrook School District near Milwaukee plans to save $16,000 a year on substitute teachers by reducing sick leave. Elmbrook staff members saw their annual sick leave cut from 10-to-15 days to just seven – and only three of those days can be used for personal reasons. At Sussex Hamilton, the 20 sick days given to teachers each year has been cut in half.



Aside from being an assault on teachers, this is also inviting a legitimate public health crisis in the state of Wisconsin. How long will it be before some young teacher, at the lowest end of the wage scale, goes into work with his/her newly diagnosed case of strep throat in order to avoid losing several hundred dollars of income?

School board spokespersons claim this mimics the private sector, which ignores the fact that most folks working in the private sector aren't privileged enough to work with a few dozen kids in a single room, many of whom wind up coming to school sick themselves because their parents can't afford to take one of their few private sector sick days to stay home with them.

Teachers work in a very different environment, and tend to get sick a little more often as a result. Any education budget cuts are a travesty, especially since (in this environment) they are being sacrificed at the altar of keeping the economically comfortable as comfortable as possible. But this particular choice of budget cuts is ill-considered. One hopes this doesn't become a trend in Wisconsin, but given the budgetary realities in a state where the Republican politicos are doing all they can to drown public schools in the bathtub, expect more districts to follow their lead.

Then, you can expect more sick teachers and sick kids as a result. In turn, expect health care costs that will probably exceed the $16,000 districts will save as a result.