First, let me establish a few facts that everyone agreed upon as the pay-cut proposal was raised. 1) The school is in financial dire straits; both school and teachers union auditors agreed that strong measures needed to be taken immediately to prevent the school from having to declare bankruptcy. 2) If the pay cut were not accepted, costs would have to be trimmed in some other way. 3) The area that could put the biggest dent in expenditures is salary (both internal staff and external contractors). Therefore, 4) if a broad-based pay cut was not instituted, entire positions would have to be cut, meaning people would be fired.
In general, the reaction to the facts fell upon party lines. A lot of local hires did not want to approve the pay cut. Quite a few local hires also supported the proposal, but I don't know of a single overseas hire who was against it. And this, I believe, is a result of the fact that the did not suffer the same conflicts of psyche. To name a few, one for past, future, and present:
Never Forget: Perhaps the main agreed-upon fact is that a primary reason the school fell into financial ruin was the poor timing of the decision to build the new campus. I'm no accountant, but even I know that you don't pull money out of your contingency fund to cover unexpected extra construction costs, especially when a high COLA based on the dollar-shekel exchange rate is indicating currency instability. Thus, although the board and administration never admitted to it, there were many allegations of prior financial mismanagement. True or not, the damage had already been done, and although I think awareness as a result of past wrongs is good, I do not think stasis borne out the necessity to correct unfixable failures is. And yet, I signed a letter to the board containing the following the line: "True, one can never go backwards in time, yet, sometimes, doing the right thing takes the wisdom, strength and courage to undo the wrong thing." I took this as a plea to try to do better in the future, but I'm not so sure. I think some people will wait until the wrong thing is undone before they cooperate any further. It makes me wonder if some Mideast mediators are waiting on the same thing.
Never Forgive: And some people are even making it clear that, even if the wrongs can be righted, they won't ever forgive the board for their problems with process: "We expressed great concern about the coercive manner in which the package was presented with a 'take it or leave it and be ready to accept the consequences' approach. ... This threat created a feeling of a 'hostage' situation that brought unbearable pressure on teachers and divided the faculty in an untenable way." Did I really sign a letter that called the board hostage-takers? Indeed, the board did offer a lesser-of-two-evils choice. But its alternative was to not offer us a choice at all; the members could've decided to start firing people without asking if we'd rather take a broad pay cut instead. This is perfectly legal and highly likely; just ask anybody in a U.S. public-school system. In my view, the board does not deserve forgiveness, but thanks. But even if there is some culpability, how is it going to encourage better negotiations in the past when one side continually attacks the other for not living up to their standards for the negotiation process? I'm talking about my school here, but some Gaza political groups might know what I mean, too.
Never A Frier: The refusal to forget and/or forgive both seem dedicated to an ever-present phenomenon: the refusal to be a frier, or sucker. Any attempt, perceived or real, to pull the wool over people's eyes will get them itching for a fight. In this case, some teachers saw the cutting of sabbatical for new hires as not just another way of tightening the pursestrings but as a method of insulting their intelligence: "We were told that the school is in an emergency situation, yet the package included a non-emergency contractual item, sabbatical for new hires. We can only see this as the Board taking advantage of the situation by linking these two issues together in the same package." If I had line-item veto powers on the letter, I would've deleted this for sure. Another non-frier allusion in the letter is to the teachers' beneficence, or "willingness to help find solutions and make sacrifices." In actuality, when the teachers union requested suggestions to trim budgets, it received few besides mine. Some said they were afraid to submit proposals, fearing they would face those cuts along with the salary reduction. The fact that any extra eliminated expenditures would probably benefit the school nonwithstanding, these people hardly demonstrated the same "good faith" they sought from board members. In a compromise situation, someone always has to be the first to give, which certainly puts that person at risk, but without that risk, little reward can be received. Not a bad reminder as the new Israeli legislature starts its work.
To be fair, the response from the board wasn't exactly stellar: "The Teachers’ Association letter, however, suggests the Board failed to act in good faith while negotiating. ... The facts do not support this claim." It, too, was laced with tinges of anti-forgetting, -forgiveness, and -frierhood. But when faced with such an offensive, it's hard not to be, um, defensive, which itself turns into a form of an attack. And thus, the cycle will continue, long after my part in the close 33-31 vote is forgotten.
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