Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for December 10, 1997 What money? Be for real!

Negotiations teams for the Board of Education and the Cairo Association of Teachers met last night for approximately 3 hours. This was the first such meeting since November 6th and the first since the Board election.

Unfortunately, the current team/Board is taking the same hard-line position as the former team/Board. Although this was not surprising in the history of negotiations in Cairo, it WAS surprising in light of the news out of Springfield last week. As I am sure that you have heard by now, the Illinois General Assembly met in special session on December 2nd and voted to give additional dollars to most school districts in Illinois--including Cairo.

Much to our surprise--and disappointment--the Board team spent considerable time trying to explain how this new law would NOT benefit Cairo. In fact, they said that Cairo would receive LESS money, despite all news reports to the contrary! After reviewing their figures--which we had verified from IEA--we found that, in fact, Cairo stands to be one of the big winners.

We reminded the Board that our previous attempts at settlement had been based on the FACT that Cairo School District Number One has OVER $1,000,000 in the First National Bank of Cairo--and that it has maintained that balance for over a year! THEY COULD AFFORD A SUBSTANTIAL RAISE BEFORE THE NEW LEGISLATION WAS PASSED! NOW the State of Illinois is going to send them--according to published reports--approximately $450,000 more!!!

Wonder what all this means? Let me give you an easy example. A 1% raise for every member of the Cairo Association of Teachers would cost the District approximately $25,000! They just got $450,000 EXTRA . Don't you think that they can afford to give us a REAL RAISE for a change?

We did NOT set another negotiations date. We asked their team to discuss their latest offer--in light of the new legislation--with the full Board at its regularly scheduled meeting on December 17th.

They are to get back to us . . . so . . . stay tuned!