In AAPS’s history, there have been two major pay cuts in teacher salaries: one was a 2.25% cut in the 2009-2010 academic year and the other was the 3% reduction that occurred in the 2013-2014 academic year. In those both intervals, teachers were confronted with an expanding class magnitude and salary freezes.
During the 2009-2010 salary reduction, Todd Roberts was the current AAPS superintendent.
“I can remember Mr. Roberts coming to my building and asking the Allen teachers at the time what we thought they should do to fix the budget,” bargainer for teacher contract Roberta Cole said. “I do remember being told that if we didn’t accept the 2.25% pay cut we would have to lay off new teachers because cuts to the budget had to be made. So the pay cut was ratified.”
The 2013-2014 pay cut collided with the beginning of the Right to Work Laws and Governer Rick Synder’s lack of funding to schools. Additionally, that was the year Jeanice Swift had become the AAPS superintendent.
“The problem with teacher compensation in AAPS is that over my 20+ years it has been very lean,” Cole said. “Somehow similar sized and funded districts are able to make their funding go farther than AAPS does.”
The most recent budget cut occurred a decade after the 3% salary cut, with $25 million taken from the budget. At this time, the AAPS superintendent transitioned from Swift to Jazz Parks.
In AAPS, teachers who have a masters degree and have been in the district for 15 years make an annual salary of $87,628. However, other districts that resemble AAPS have teachers make over $100,000 per year.
“Teacher unions have been around for a very, very long time,” math teacher and union representative Caroline Williams said. “There are people who quite literally have been on battle lines with unions in order to create the five day work week and working from nine to five; these things are part of our history.”
AAPS is contained in the Ann Arbor Educational Association (AAEA), which folds into the Michigan Educational Association (MEA) within the National Education Association (NEA).
“It’s a give and take,” Williams said. “They only have so much money [and] there’s so much that we want.”
Williams is part of a team that develops the teacher contract, assisting to merge what teachers need and with what can be done within that. Within the master document of 170 pages, the contract is comprehensive of elementary schools, middle schools and high school teachers — “we’re not forgetting about anyone.”
Williams owns three different shirts for the occasion: a blue shirt, a red shirt and a gray shirt with the pride symbol. For the colder days, she dresses in a sweatshirt.
“To me, it’s important just to make sure that the union is visible,” Williams said.
The contract revolves around many collaborative factors: salaries, class sizes, lunch length, work length, preparation hours; how a teacher functions in the classroom and outside of it. To determine what can be received and expected, there is a bargaining team that neogtiates for the union’s wants, needs and rights.
“I always think that it’s easy for us to forget some of the things that people literally fought. People died for our unions when it comes to our work weeks,” Williams said. “The weekend only exists because of unions.”
