Teacher salaries being cut in Fremont School District

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Story Published: Jun 1, 2009 at 7:45 PM MST

Story Updated: Jun 1, 2009 at 9:23 PM MST

By Steven Pope

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ST. ANTHONY - Since the district declared a Financial Emergency, eyewitness news has received numerous concerns from viewers.

"We have some teachers who work two or three extra jobs. We're not the highest paid school district around here," said LaDawn Goebel, Union Leader.

In fact, in Eastern Idaho they're the second lowest paid.

"Our big concern, is now that the district has declared the emergency, the board wants us to move back to the revised state salary level," said Lane Owens, a 5th Grade Teacher at Parker Elementary.

The Education Board wants to lower teacher salaries by an average of 25-hundred dollars per teacher.

While the district reported a 1.8 million dollar deficit recently, teachers believe the numbers are wrong.

Since the state is cutting money based on proportional population in the districts, they give this example to show their case.

Fremont County should be losing 432-thousand dollars because they're bigger than Sugar-Salem which is losing 350-thousand, and smaller than Teton which is losing 450-thousand. Bonneville is losing 1.8 million themselves, and is four times the size of Fremont.

Owens continued, "It's definitely causing frustrations, because it's been historic in our district that they take large amounts of money from our M&O budgets and put it in plant facility budgets where it can't be touched. They use those monies to build stand alone gyms, bus stops, add onto Ashton Elementary, and to remodel this district building we're standing in front of."

Education Board Chair, Phil Baker said, "consider this our last best offer," and handed out a paper that called for a 1.25 million dollar levy.

Teacher's don't think a levy is necessary, and believe there's actually a surplus of money, but it's being held onto by the Board as a contingency fund for a rainy day.

Goebel, "It seems like (their) numbers keep changing."

The Union proposed moving into mediation tonight, declining a levy. The Board has not agreed to mediation yet.

The school board will tell teachers tomorrow at 9:30am...whether they accept their proposal to move into mediation.

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