Union Members Will Be Rallying Once Again In Support Of Aides

This week, the Montclair Education Association distributed a flyer to members, urging them to rally once again before the Board of Education meeting on Monday, March 14 at 6:30 p.m. on the corner of North Fullerton and Chestnut Street.

"Keep the pressure on the Board members with letters, emails, and phone calls," the flyer said. "Tell them they made the wrong decision when they chose to outsource paraprofessionals."

Representatives from the MEA met recently with three Board of Education members and Jim Patterson, the Montclair School District's personnel director.

The MEA said it presented them with a written proposal that would keep the school portion of taxes at the current rate in Montclair and still save the jobs of highly qualified paraprofessionals with no changes to their salary and benefits.

School Board President Shelly Lombard said Thursday that she has not been part of the negotiating team so doesn't know a lot about the MEA's proposal.

But according to the Montclair Times, Margaret Astorino, the MEA's interim president, said the group is proposing that each household in Montclair be assessed a $131 annual fee "flat tax" designed to generate $1.4 million.

That, combined with the $366,000 that the board has already restored for teacher assistant positions from the increased state aid it just received, and the district could come up with the $1.7 million needed to prevent the outsourcing of aides, the MEA said.

At previous school board meetings, Superintendent Dr. Frank Alvarez has said that the district could save $1.7 million per year by eliminating 240 full- and part-time teacher aides. The idea would be to contract with the Essex Regional Educational Services Commission for its teacher aide services starting the next school year.

But many parents are worried about the loss of experienced aides, some of whom have worked with the same set of children for years.

"I think the outsourcing idea is bad policy, especially as the district is considering making Montclair public schools a 'center of excellence' for special education," said Mary Funari, a parent and PCI Certified Parent Coach ®. "If there are inefficiencies with the number and use of current aides, it would be better to handle them through personnel management.

"There are many gifted and experienced aides in our schools who have given years of service and made a critical difference in the lives of the special needs children they assisted as well as other students they worked with in the general education classrooms," she said. "These are the types of employees the district needs to maintain especially as they look to bringing more classified students back in district."

Lombard said the school board is scheduled to vote on the district's $110,035,941 budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year during a public meeting on Monday, March 14, at 7:30 p.m. in George Inness Annex of Montclair High School at 141 Park Street.