I couldn't agree more with Mr. Stephen Vowels who, in his May 1 letter regarding the North Smithfield school budget, wrote "we need to purposely work together to find resolutions to the issues." So far, the council, Administrator Lowe and the taxpayers have collectively contributed the following solutions:

1) Approved a new middle school to deal with the School Committee's space issue concerns.

2) Approved and contributed school funding increases of $1.5 million in fiscal year 05/06, $.8 million in 06/07 and $0.8 million in 07/08.

3) Are prepared to approve and contribute an additional $2.4 million for fiscal year 08/09, which includes the $0.8 million maximum allowable under the law, along with an S-3050 override amount of $1.65 million for the middle school's debt service.

Students have contributed by absorbing program cuts.

Superintendent Lindberg has contributed by obtaining health insurance savings by employing the tools of the free market (i.e. competition), which interestingly are foreign concepts to the teachers' union where the best teachers get paid the same as the worst and job security is the result of the passage of time as opposed to merit.

So, the question is what and when will the School Committee and the teachers' union contribute? For the third year running, the School Committee has refused to even entertain a discussion or debate with respect to implementing common sense and fair minded changes to the union contract.

The "budget gap" could be easily closed with a combination of some or all of the following changes to the contract:

1) Increase the number of teaching steps from the current level of 10 steps to 12 steps;

2) Increase the employee share of healthcare to at least 25 percent from a mere 10 percent;

3) Reduce or eliminate the healthcare buyback (in conjunction with a 25 percent co-pay);

4) Eliminate the costly and restrictive contract language that limits teaching time to no more than 6.9 hours over a two-day period in which union members are paid for 14 hours of work, resulting in teachers spending less than 50 percent of their time in the classroom, thus requiring additional and costly staff.

Whether you agree with the ideas or not, it is unacceptable that the School Committee won't even put the issues on the table for discussion. Instead, they behave as though there are only two potential solutions: constant demands for more funding or threats of program cuts.

The council, under the former leadership of Ed Yazbak, tried in vain to be proactive when they encouraged the School Committee to make the common sense and fair-minded changes to the union contract that are so desperately needed to help mitigate the significant costs of the new middle school. Indeed, the Council pleaded with the School Committee to, as Mr. Vowels so eloquently stated, "focus on the entire community rather than constantly highlighting one constituency" by considering the taxpayers and the students, as opposed to just focusing on keeping the union happy. Perhaps with the prodding of folks like Mr. Vowels, the School Committee will become motivated to "purposefully work together" with the Council to "proactively" find solutions other than the School Committee's usual, stubborn and selfish two choices of more funding or program cuts. Those have been done. It's now time to look at the union contract.

James Cournoyer

North Smithfield