By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org

DENVER — The Denver school board is asking voters to approve “the biggest school tax package in Colorado history” in the Nov. 6 election.

Before deciding whether they want to pay more school taxes, voters may want to know what their school district has done, or plans to do, about runaway union labor costs.

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If the district’s spending record in one recent school year is any indication, there is still a lot of work to do in that area.

EAGnews.org recently did a sampling of district expenditures in the 2010-11 school year that were tied to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association’s collective bargaining agreement. We share our findings in the latest edition of our ongoing report, “Sucking the Life Out of America’s Public Schools: The Expense of Teachers Union Contracts.”

We learned that in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years, the Denver school district cut $34 million from its general fund budget to make ends meet during tough economic times. There were cuts to administrative and support staff, increases in class sizes and cuts to crucial student services like transportation.

Yet in the 2010-11 school year, the district found enough money to pay out $21.4 million in automatic, annual raises to teachers (regardless of their effectiveness), $23.8 million for an employee benefit allowance, $311,542 in reimbursement to employees for unused sick days, among other unnecessary expenses.

Public schools exist primarily for children, not the people who work in them. When times are tough, every available dollar should be dedicated to meeting student needs, instead of paying for a bunch of union perks that have no impact on education quality.

We urge Denver residents to dig deeper into the school district’s labor budget, and ask school officials if this kind of spending is still going on, despite the continued financial challenges facing the district.

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The waste will only continue unless taxpayers demand otherwise.