Board of Aldermen 02-08-2022 Page 12
Lastly, and I’m sorry that I’m taking up so much time. Teachers and the union. We have to get this contract settled.
Union — you have to get back to the table. Board of Education — you have to meet with them and you have to make the
concessions. We have to get this contract done. We’re losing teachers. Forty-one teachers are retiring. That’s double
what normally retires. It’s not that we just have 41 teachers that are at the retiring age. | think they’re just fed up with the
way schools are dealt with today. You cannot manage a classroom like you used to when we were all kids, except for
Tyler. You can’t manage that. Teachers feel threatened by parents and they’re leaving. So this contract is just another
piece of that. We have to get them back to the table. We have to keep teachers. Young teachers are being paid too low.
They can go to other cities and make much more money than here. We don't want to lose good teachers. They’re the
ones teaching our kids. I'll leave it as that. | just want to see us doing more in the city. | want to get us back. We have a
good Board of Aldermen and | want us to get back to — and Alderwomen - and | want to get back to doing good things in
the city and having some of this stuff resolved so thank you.
Alderman Cathey
Thank you. I, too, have a few questions and thoughts. First, I’d like to echo what Derek is saying about teachers feeling
threatened. My wife and | have talked to many a teacher who feel disinclined to take cell phones because parents will
complain that cell phones have been taken. | have instructed all the teachers to take my kid’s phone because | don't care.
Do it. Keep them if you want to | don't really care. So | understand that there’s a lot of stress on the teachers for how to
manage classrooms especially with the schools being as large as they are, especially for South and North.
A question. Is the BOE the one controlling the masks for the AD or is it just a separate athletics policy?
Alderwoman Timmons
It’s the BOE.
Alderman Thibeault
Thank you. So the BOE is the masks. The AD controls things like how many people can show up there. She does, | will
say in her defense, she does meet with the Board of Health | think what | was told weekly. So she’s getting her direction
from the Board of Health. Still to say it’s from the city and people come back to me on it, again, if the city was doing it, all
the other city stuff would be limited too.
Alderman Cathey
So separate from the BOE, that’s the policy that she’s implemented for athletics?
Alderman Thibeault
That’s what | believe.
Alderman Cathey
Okay. Good to know.
| had two procedural questions that | don’t really understand. One would be — and we actually talked about this — when
something is not on the agenda — so let’s say someone wanted to bring up the mask mandate for reconsideration can you
do that or does it have to be pre-planned on the agenda? How does that work?
President Wilshire
You can make a motion.
Alderman Cathey
Oh, okay. | didn’t Know police, procedure wise what that looked like.
If we were to object to something, what does that do? When you said, “there being no objection’? If an Alderman
objected, what happens?
