School board OKs contracts for teachers, administrators
BLOOMFIELD— The Bloomfield Board of Education has agreed to new contracts for its administrators and its teachers.
The three-year contract with administrators calls for general wage increases of 2.33% in the first year, 2.62% in the second and 2.83% in the third. Overall, with step increases the total increase in salaries is 2.83%.
The insurance copay for administrators will also increase by 1% annually, from 16% to 18% over the life of the contract.
The agreement also calls for $600 annual longevity payments for administrators with 20 or more years experience and annual annuity payment based on length of service ranging from $2,500 to $3,500.
Administrators who work a 12-month schedule are entitled to 20 sick days, 6 personal leave, 13 holiday and 25 vacation days a year. They may also accumulate up to 240 unused sick days.
Sick days were reduced to 15 for administrators who work less than 12 months a year and the accumulation of unused sick days was capped at 220 in the labor agreement.
Administrators can also save 12 vacation days a year with a cap at 37 days, according to the agreement, which also carries a clause that prohibits going out on strike.
Board of Education Chairman Donald Harris said Friday that the contract was approved unanimously and that he was pleased that they were able to reach an agreement without needing arbitration.
On the teacher’s side, the school board and the Bloomfield Teachers Association came to agreement on a one-year contract in order to avoid going to arbitration.
John Robinson, the district’s director of technology and human resources coordinator, said Friday that the two sides had agreed to most of the elements of a new contract during negotiations, except for health insurance.
Robinson said that the district is exploring ways to reduce health insurance costs and that they wouldn’t be able to have something to present to the union before the length of negotiations would require them to enter into mediation and arbitration.
The contract calls for an overall 2.85% total salary increase, which includes a 1.75% general wage increase and additional payments for steps and other stipends.
Under the terms of the agreement, teachers are allowed 6 personal leave days and 15 sick days. They can also carry over all unused sick days. Teachers with 25 years of service are also eligible to cash in 25% of, or 30 total unused sick days when they leave the district.
Robinson said that teachers who joined the district after 2018 are not eligible to be compensated for unused sick days.
Psst ... Disney+: Candace Parker has a regular gig on TNT’s “Inside the NBA.”
Parker’s return home to Chicago to play for the Chicago Sky was hailed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot as “truly a great day in the city of Chicago.” Because it was. Anybody who knows anything about women’s basketball knows it was a big deal.
Women’s basketball, in fact, is a big deal. The USA Basketball Women’s National Team has won six Olympic gold medals in a row. When Sue Bird, who has four Olympic golds, recently signed on for her 20th year on the Seattle Storm, Seattle Times sports columnist Larry Stone wrote of Bird, “The entirety of Seattle sports — of Seattle, period — got immeasurably better with her arrival.”
Bird, as you may know, is married to Megan Rapinoe, winner of the World Cup Golden Boot and Golden Ball and considered by many to be the best soccer player — not just best female soccer player; best soccer player — on the planet.
Women’s soccer is also a big deal. Maybe Disney+ has heard?
As the New York Times points out in this story about players’ fight for equal pay:
“The United States Women’s National Team is the best in the world and has been for decades. Since the FIFA Women’s World Cup was inaugurated in 1991, the United States has won three of the seven titles, including the most recent one in 2015. Since women’s soccer became
an Olympic sport in 1996, it has won four of six gold medals. The team has been ranked No. 1 by FIFA for 10 of the last 11 years and has produced some of the biggest female sports stars of the last several decades.”
When the U.S. Women’s National Team was competing for the 2019 World Cup, my son and his friends walked around wearing Alex Morgan jerseys.
I wrote a column about it at the time because I thought it was kind of remarkable. I never remember boys wearing female athletes’ jerseys when I was a kid. My kids could not have been less impressed with this “progress.”
“Do boys wear Women’s National Team jerseys at your school?” I asked my daughter at the time, about
her giant Chicago Public Schools high school.
“Yeah, why?”
One sentence. Yeah, why? Like I was asking if people still need oxygen.
This is the world to which Disney+ is gifting “Big Shot,” a new David E. Kelley series starring John Stamos.
“After getting ousted from the NCAA, a hothead men’s basketball coach must take a job at an all-girls high school,” reads the synopsis. “He soon learns that teenage girls are more than just X’s and O’s; they require empathy and vulnerability — foreign concepts for the stoic Coach Korn (Stamos). By learning how to connect with his players, Marvyn starts to grow into the person he’s always hoped to be. The girls learn to take
themselves more seriously, finding their footing both on and off the court.” Mmmmmkay.
Disney+ recently started tweeting promos for the series.
They went over about as well as you’d imagine.
“Chock full of every garbage trope you can imagine,” Hemal Jhaveri, race and inclusion editor at USA Today Sports Media Group, tweeted in reply. “Girls don’t take sports seriously. Male abuser using women as a path to redemption. Coaching women as an undesirable, last-ditch option. This is one hot mess.”
Other tweets: “How does this get greenlit in 2021?” “‘Coaching girls = rock bottom’ is how this reads.” “Story about the man coach having a crisis
rather than the story of the talented female athletes? (yawn emoji) Come on Disney! Get us some Serena Williams fire power for us to watch!!”
“Disney,” Jhaveri continued, “I could get a group of incredible writers who know everything about women’s sports, and we could give you a better show by the end of the damn day.”
I called Jhaveri.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “It says his last shot is coaching women, which is an undesirable option for men trying to rehabilitate themselves so they can get a real coaching job, which would be coaching men.”
Jhaveri is used to having conversations with dinosaurs who diminish the value and prowess of women athletes.
“Invariably, when I talk about women’s sports, within 30 seconds someone will say, ‘It’s women’s sports. Who cares?’ ” Jhevari said. “It’s the default, knee-jerk reaction from people who think because women’s sports don’t have as large a share in the marketplace, they are not of value. It’s incredibly frustrating.”
It also says more about the dinosaurs’ inability (or unwillingness) to read the room than it does about the popularity of women’s sports.
But Disney+, home to Disney classics, Pixar movies and Marvel movies, skews young. It’s unfortunate that in their search for original programming, they’d settle for a concept that so wildly misses the mark.
Even if “Big Shot” winds its way toward a feel-good lesson about the folly of underestimating female athletes, it will be delivering that lesson to a bunch of folks who didn’t realize they were supposed to be underestimating them in the first place.
Besides, haven’t we seen enough of girls and women being reduced to a leading man’s opportunity for personal growth? Like at Andrew Cuomo’s press conferences?
We’re going to pass on this one. I have a feeling a lot of people will. And if Disney+ decides to head back to the drawing board for a series that belongs in this century? I’ll check if I can pass along Jhaveri’s number.