Town Meeting or Teacher Bashing?

And a lovely town meeting it was. But I'll try to stick to the facts.

1) The teachers' union agreed to two furlough days for next year.
2) Before the furlough is taken into account, the average teacher raise was 4.75%. And that number was thrown around a LOT.
3) Starting salary in Lebanon is under $30,000 (just so we see what we're talking about here--they're not rolling in money!)
4) People are VERY upset that the teachers are getting a raise at all.
5) To some people, the whole reason we're in a budget crisis at all is because of Those Darned Greedy Teachers.
6) There goes my objectivity.

Beyond that, the group of moms (and one dad) who spoke out at the public hearing in April were dubbed the CML: the Concerned Mothers of Lebanon. Great! Let's DO something, CMLs! I think that, even though we'd like to see a bigger budget (really really like to see it!), we need to vote YES at the referendum vote on May 11th to protect the money we did manage to secure. One person tried to make a motion that the town budget be reduced by $300,000 (to be subtracted from the BOE budget, naturally), but that wasn't legal. Whew! We need to do some serious campaigning to get this vote through, I think. If you want to help, let me know. We have to get out the vote on May 11th.

Do you have more to add? Got clarifications or corrections? Send them on! If you want them to get posted, just leave me a comment and I'll make a new post. The point of this was to share info. So share! Pass it on.