ANDERSON­ — Anderson Community Schools’ dire prediction of “finanacial disaster” makes voiding the local teachers union contract a possibility, Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said Friday. He also criticized the Anderson Federation of Teachers as being more concerned with teachers than students.

“Part of the problem is the labor union has not been flexible with Anderson Community Schools for quite some time,” Bennett said in a telephone interview. He said the AFT had shown “a history of the desires of adults trumping what’s best for kids.”

Bennett said, “Let’s walk around Anderson and see how many people are getting a 2.5 percent raise or a 4 percent raise as part of the master contract. ... The teachers are.”

“He’s absolutely wrong,” AFT President Rick Muir said of Bennett’s criticism. He said teachers had received no raises and forgone future raises, had given concessions on insurance and retirement benefits and expected to give more at the bargaining table.

“I’m insulted Tony Bennett would make that kind of statement,” Muir said. “He speaks before he knows what he’s talking about, and he does that all over the state of Indiana.



“I’m very upset he made the statement Anderson teachers aren’t doing anything” to address the finanacial crisis, Muir said. “Tony Bennett and (Gov.) Mitch Daniels’ administration is absolutely attacking public education.”

Some ACS teachers will get a raise in the range Bennett suggested, ACS Business Manager Kevin Brown said. “There’s no across the board pay raise effective in 2010,” he said, but teachers moving up the salary scale are entitled under the contract to incremental wage increases.

“At least half of the staff are probably subject to that,” Brown said.

“We’re working very hard with teachers union to try to come up with some cost savings and cost efficiencies,” he said.

Bennett’s comments came in response to a letter from ACS Superintendent Felix Chow that Bennett called “a pretty loud cry that Anderson Community Schools is about to hit the threshold of deficit financing.” He said such a scenario would raise the possibility of voiding the AFT contract.

Chow’s letter that said Anderson schools would be unable to balance its budget as required by law, predicting that “at the current rate of declining revenues and increasing expenditures, (ACS) will deplete all of its financial resources sometime in the second half of 2012.”

ACS and schools around Indiana have struggled through the recession with budget cuts forced by declining revenues. However, Bennett said “This is the first reach from a superintendent the actually addresses the financial solvency of a school corporation.”

Chow’s letter, also signed by school board President P.T. Morgan, said “The purpose of this communication is to avoid the financial disaster in 2012 by increasing potential revenues and/or further reductions in expenditures that would not jeopardize our fulfillment to the educational mission and our compliance to the statutory requirements.”

The letter also was forwarded to Indiana lawmakers.

ACS has predicted that by 2012 the structural deficit of all school corporation funds will range from a worst-case scenario of $22 million to a best-case scenario of $11 million.

Bennett, a Republican, acknowledged that teachers union givebacks would not only fully address ACS’s financial shortfall, but he said AFT hasn’t done as much as it should to be part of the solution.

“My point is, if the teaching profession is that important to that labor union,” he said, the union should be “willing to make concessions to keep teachers working.”

Muir, a Democrat who also serves as president of the Indiana Federation of Teacheres, said Bennett appeared unaware of concessions that teachers have made and those that teachers are being asked to make, not just in Anderson, but statewide.

“Why is he making these off-the-wall statements?” Muir said.

Contact Dave Stafford: 648-4250, dave.stafford@heraldbulletin.com