Dear Editor, I am a parent and community member for 20 years.
I’ve been the El Toro Elementary School Morgan Hill Federation of
Teachers representative and a teacher in this district for nearly
30 years.
Dear Editor,
I am a parent and community member for 20 years. I’ve been the El Toro Elementary School Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers representative and a teacher in this district for nearly 30 years.
From this you can tell that I come to you with a variety of perspectives on our district and the decision that our school trustees made in June to extend Dr. Alan Nishino’s contract and give him a merit pay raise.
At the last board meeting, one of our principals indicated to you that this had been a wonderful year. I know that principals and administrators work for the superintendent at his pleasure and that they can be reassigned whenever it is necessary.
But I don’t really think that anyone in the district has seen much respect shown towards the administrator at Martin Murphy Middle School as she was re-assigned to an elementary school mid-year or when her vice principal was re-assigned full-time to Sobrato, and then reassigned as a teacher at Britton. I don’t think that much respect is shown for elementary principals when they must work six days a week just to keep their heads above water and then burn out and need to retire long before their career in our district should end.
I don’t see much respect for our employees when the message for the last month or so has been that “we can’t spend any money that comes into the district this year to salaries because this will be one-time monies only.” How does that show respect for employees when the board of education gives Dr. Nishino a raise? How does that show respect for the employees of this district who work just as hard and have obviously worked longer for Morgan Hill Unified School District than Dr. Nishino has?
I remember well when Donna Foster brought in the statistics regarding our prior superintendent being the highest paid in the county. She also indicated that our teachers were the lowest paid of like-funded districts. I cannot believe that the board members were not made aware of those statistics at the time. Well, here we are again with a new superintendent who is being rewarded for his hard work – of less than one year and he doesn’t want the teachers and classified staffs to be rewarded for their hard work of many years? I don’t see how anyone in their right mind could think that this is wonderful in the least.
On another note, our district has let another outstanding teacher candidate slip through our fingers, my daughter, Jennifer Lee. She was an honor student who graduated from Live Oak High School in 2000 and who wanted to teach in this very district and had looked forward to it for years. She signed a contract for $4,000 a year more than we could offer her and with full benefits! It truly saddened me to encourage her to sign that contract.
Why don’t we show respect to all our employees by paying them a fair wage? Why can’t we attract quality new young teachers by offering them a fair wage and benefits? Why can’t we even respect our retirees by giving them their own opportunity to shine and not squeeze them into the half-time of a board meeting? This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my personal perspective on the wonderful year we have just concluded with Dr. Nishino.
Why has our union leadership had to go to such lengths all year long to even get teacher input into curriculum decisions? That’s part of our federation rights as outlined in the contract, but has consistently been ignored by this superintendent. Why did teachers have to beg to be included in the decision-making process? What was so difficult about having task force meetings and teacher input? Where is the respect in this?
Now, it seems to be obvious from my perspective that you are in violation of the Brown Act. You have an opportunity to make this right! You have an opportunity to show the kind of respect for us that you should. Dr. Nishino will not be here in this district for 30 years. He will be gone and we are the team of employees whom you should truly be the most concerned about.
Jackie Lee, Morgan Hill
Fifth-grade teacher at El Toro Elementary School
