{"id":17449,"date":"2016-09-04T14:09:37","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T19:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=17449"},"modified":"2016-09-04T14:15:43","modified_gmt":"2016-09-04T19:15:43","slug":"gawping-at-gaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=17449","title":{"rendered":"Gawping at gaps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Loren Martell’s latest Reader<\/strong> column<\/a> showed up online today. He mentioned our pontification heavy recent school board meeting that took three hours to complete dealing with three “gaps” to be found in our schools. His synopsis includes some of the verbiage and his observation that I can be pretty verby myself although he gives me a pass for this particular meeting.<\/p>\n

The final gap he mentions is the pay gap between our hourly subs and everybody else:<\/p>\n

\nThe people who work part-time positions (10-14 hours a week,) performing tasks like monitoring playgrounds or filling in as substitutes for full-time workers in food service, get paid minimum wage by ISD 709.<\/p>\n

The three dissenting Board members–Mr. Welty, Mr. Johnston and Ms Oswald–wanted to make a gesture of support to the district\u2019s poorest workers by adding another fifty cents to the latest State-mandated increase, bringing their pay up to an even $10\/hr., which administration estimated would cost $51,000 annually. Getting push-back against this increase, member Oswald tried to amend the resolution to a 25-cent increase.
\n\u201cWe approve change orders many times a year,\u201d member O. argued, \u201cthat are vastly higher than $25,000. Just this month we\u2019re being asked to approve $55,000 worth of window issues to be resolved at Myers-Wilkins. This is also something (still approving lingering Red Plan change orders) that we have to stop doing, if we want to argue that this increase in wages is not in our budget\u2026We\u2019ve already approved another administrative position that will be paid $102,000 a year. That\u2019s only one employee. This quarter\/hr. affects many, many more employees\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The debate about fairness and gaps was off and running again. In the end, the people on the low end of the pay totem pole lost two-bits\/hr. The vote was a 3-3 tie. In the boardroom a tie is a loss for those trying to pass something. For readers counting the \u201cyous,\u201d there were only six Board members present. Member Sandstad had been granted another \u201cexcused\u201d absence, though I\u2019d bet a quarter she would have been another \u2018nay\u2019 vote with her DFL-endorsed comrades.<\/p>\n

Superintendent Gronseth weighed in on the debate, pointing out that \u201cminimum wage in Wisconsin is still at $7.35\/hr.\u201d On the subject of gaps: at seven bucks an hour, it would take three people working nonstop 24\/7, 365 days to equal the Superintendent\u2019s annual compensation.
\nThe man at the top of pay pyramid did graciously agree to keep a quarter tip jar on his desk, just in case some poor, minimum-wage bloke from Wisconsin should wander over the Bong bridge.<\/p>\n

Three of us from the general public were left in the boardroom to witness the vote. As important as the evening\u2019s debate was, the three-hour spectacle was not quite ready for the Olympics spotlight. In fact, when we finally got to the end, I did my very best imitation of Usain Bolt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can watch that debate on youtube at https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eWl2gfyodmw<\/a> That discussion starts a little after the 1 hour 47 minute point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loren Martell’s latest Reader column showed up online today. He mentioned our pontification heavy recent school board meeting that took three hours to complete…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-duluth-schools","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17449"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17453,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17449\/revisions\/17453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}