KHSD board member calls for teacher pay cuts
By THE BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN
Ken Mettler called on the Kern High School District Board of Trustees Tuesday to "think outside the box" and consider cutting public school employee salaries, benefits and pensions due to the budget crisis.
Mettler, one of five members of the board and president of the Republican Assembly of Kern County, said the state's proposal to cut public employee salaries by 5 percent over the next three years could be a model for the district. He laid out his proposal in a press release on Republican Assembly letterhead.
KHSD teacher salaries range from $43,000 for a beginning teacher to more than $93,000 for a teacher with 33 years of experience.
The district employs approximately 1,700 teachers, who work under a contract collectively bargained by the district and the Kern High School Teachers Association.
The district said it must cut $30 million through the 2011-12 school year, in addition to $20 million in cuts it has already made this year from a budget of $342 million.
In other district news, Jay Sullivan was named the new principal of Frontier High School. Sullivan began his career in the district as a teacher in 1992; most recently he was Frontier's assistant principal for instruction.
Sullivan takes the reins from retiring principal Bill Bruce on July 1.
Most CommentedMost Popular
Since Karen Goh returned to Kern County from a publishing career in New York in 2004, she has helped foster a strong network of Christian leaders in government, politics, media, business and nonprofits.
A settlement has been reached in radio talk show host Inga Barks' sexual harassment lawsuit against former co-host Scott Cox and American General Media.
Is Kern County, as has widely been reported, really the expulsion capital of California? That's the question posed Friday by state Sen. Michael Rubio, D-Shafter, to 50 or so Kern County educators, elementary and high school district administrators and community leaders.
Here's a bit of news that I didn't expect. The Kern County District Attorney's office has launched an investigation into whether the Board of Supervisors' practice of routinely placing the job performance of County Administrative Officer John Nilon on the "closed session" portion of its agenda is...
Since Karen Goh returned to Kern County from a publishing career in New York in 2004, she has helped foster a strong network of Christian leaders in government, politics, media, business and nonprofits.
Young's Marketplace, an independent grocery store that's a Bakersfield institution, will close at the end of the week.
Bakersfield’s Faast Pharmacy is going out of business and will be acquired by the big chain CVS, it was confirmed Monday.
Amtrak is suing a Kern County truck driver for more than half a million dollars in connection with a 2010 train crash in Shafter that injured about 20 people.