I would like to thank the former Riverside-Brookfield High School board president and architect of our present teachers’ contract for warning us taxpayers of Riverside of the destructive school board (“Save RBHS from ‘destructive’ school board,” Opinion, Nov. 21).
God, how I wish someone had warned us when he was running for the school board. While not being the single reason for running the district into such deep debt, he is the most detrimental.
He evidently had no idea how the 2005-08 contract would affect the budget with 5-percent increases. I have no idea what he was thinking when he penned the 2008 five-year teachers’ contract with higher increases and no clue at all how to pay for it other than squeezing taxpayers for more tax money.
The present board and administration is trying hard to gain our trust again, but it still has a long way to go. One big factor in regaining this trust will be the negotiation of the new 2013 teachers’ contract.
We can no longer afford to pay these salaries or provide the benefits. If the board is going to want to hire more teachers to reduce class sizes to what teachers want, serious cuts will have to be made. He has single-handedly made this task near impossible.
Frank Vlazny
Riverside
