The Alexander City Outlook

AEA could be hurting education

Since moving to the area a few years ago I’ve discovered one of the great advantages in raising a family here is having access to a great public school system. Let’s face it; we’re blessed to have excellent teachers, administrators and facilities right here in Alexander City.

Regardless of the exceptional state of our local system, there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with the way state government allocates funds for Alabama’s education system. Specifically, I’m referring to health insurance and retirement costs for state education employees.

Recent media reports have stated these costs will increase by $136 million, or eight percent, in 2011. Let’s be clear; this increase will occur in only one year. If we continue to see similar increases over the next five years, our state government will be facing a financial catastrophe like never before.

There are two related reasons for this dramatic increase in costs. One is the Alabama Education Association (AEA), which is a powerful union that lobbies state government for better pay and benefits for education employees. The other is a state legislature that has acquiesced to AEA demands over the years and increased education employee benefits by 18 percent since 2000.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with AEA working to protect its members’ pay and benefits. This is its primary function and it does the job rather well. I would be happy to have a union as strong and influential as AEA working for me.

However, recent events in the auto industry have clearly demonstrated the consequences of allowing unions too much influence over pay and benefits. A major reason why GM went bankrupt was the skyrocketing costs of worker salaries, health benefits and retirement plans. The sweet deals worked out by the auto union ultimately helped to undermine the viability of the company and sent it on the path to bankruptcy. The irony is many auto workers lost their jobs partly as a result of their own union’s actions.

My fear is the same thing is going to happen in Alabama. If our politicians do not get control of education expenses, academic programs will be severely cut and teachers will lose their jobs.

We have three options to correct the problem. First, we can raise taxes. However, this seems fundamentally unfair in this current economic climate. Many people are paying higher premiums for health insurance and having their benefits cut by companies trying to cope with decreased revenue. It’s just not right to ask folks to pay higher taxes to ensure education employees’ benefit costs remain low while their own costs are increasing.

Second, we can cut academic programs, reduce teacher salaries and fire non-tenured education employees. However, this will hurt the children of this state by limiting their educational opportunities and harming their ability to succeed in life.

Third, we can ask education employees to pay more for their benefits. Right now, teachers’ premiums for health insurance are very low, especially when compared to premiums offered in the private sector. Raising their costs to a comparable level is a reasonable and fair thing to do.

Some might argue that raising benefit costs for education employees amounts to a pay decrease. This is true. However, many folks that are losing their jobs and going on unpaid furloughs are not sympathetic to this line of reasoning.

The fairest course of action is to ask education employees to share the burden of their increasing costs by paying more for their benefits. This will help save valuable academic programs and education jobs, which are very important to Alexander City and the rest of Alabama.