More Lies From Baracy

Wayne Westland Superintendent Greg Baracy has a problem with the truth. He just can't tell it.

The latest "update" on teacher negotiations released by Baracy's office says that teachers are asking for a 14% pay increase.

That's just simply not true.

Teachers have asked for a TWO percent raise, reduced class sizes and to keep quality health care.

I've saved a clip of the pdf below because if they follow past behavior, the press release will disappear from their website and Baracy will deny it ever existed:

Baracy, Board Deny Teacher Sacrifices

Wayne-Westland School District Officials just aren't interested in negotiating a new teacher contract in good faith.

By adopting a take-it-or-leave-it negotiating strategy, they've refused to acknowledge years of concessions made by teachers to help cut costs district wide. In fact, Superintendent Greg Baracy refuses to even acknowledge that there have been any savings at all.

The truth is that the teachers have saved the district over $10 million during the last contract. That represents around 8% of the school system's annual budget.

In the last contract, more than 60% of the district's teachers agreed to pay cuts of $3,000 a year for each of the next twelve years.

That's twelve years of future pay cuts, on top of the decade of stagnant salaries that preceded it. Now thanks to those give-backs, Wayne Westland's starting salaries are $6,000 less than neighboring districts. Indeed, Wayne Westland ranks near the bottom of all districts in Wayne County. (you can look it up).

To help the district financially, teachers also agreed to a doubling of medical co-pays and to ever cheaper health care packages.

All this adds up to significant savings for the district.

Baracy should stop being so mean-spirited and take negotiations seriously.

Baracy Plays Juvenile Games At Board Meeting

Learning that Wayne Westland teachers planned to attend the Monday August 18 Board of Education Meeting, Superintendent Greg Baracy ordered every administrator to attend to occupy seats, fill the room to the fire code limit and deny entry to teachers.

Not satisfied with that, Baracy set several of his goons at the door to prevent anyone from entering the public meeting.

It violated Michigan Open meetings laws, but Baracy has never been interested in legality, only in control. He knew that later local cable broadcasts would show teacher unification and couldn't risk having that image broadcast.