That's the ticket. The union can ask for anything it wants. It's the job of of management to push back.
-— . It’s the job of of management to push back -—
This highlights the problem with unionizing civil servants, that even FDR recognized. There’s no there, there. The “management” has no incentive to control costs.
And the power of the “customers” (parents and taxpayers) is badly attenuated.
As Milton Friedman said, diffused costs minimizes taxpayer and parental motivation, while concentrated benefits makes unions highly motivated.
Unfortunately the public school system hasn't been this way for some time. I am old enough to remember the days when local school boards were made up of people who were not chosen, supported and financed by the unions, but I'm getting up there in years. No, the job of management in public schools today is:
a. making sure the unions are taken care of
b. the state (and now, federal) political officers are appeased
c. the bureaucracy is maintained and furthered, contingent on (a) and (b).
When my dad began his teaching career in the late 1950s, the administrations answered to the boards, the boards answered to the taxpayers, and the taxpayers watched every dime along with the character of every hire. I don't recall any of these "provincial, uptight skinflints" hating their children or wanting to destroy "the future," but that is generally the virtually unanswerable - due to current media tactics - matched set of charges leveled at anyone who wants sanity returned to public education.
Mr. niteowl77