Past Butler School Boards’ generous teacher contracts maintained labor peace and employee morale, and both are important elements of an effective school district. But the top priority of the district is the children it serves, and it should not sit well with parents or any district resident that students might now suffer due to past boards’ failure to demand more reasonable teachers’ pacts.

And, in addition to the negative impact on students that might be on the way for the 2012-13 school year and beyond, Butler property owners apparently face a two-mill increase in their real estate tax bills, effective July 1. And there’s no guarantee that this year’s fiscal decisions will spare the district of further tough actions.

Past boards failed to acknowledge the cumulative effect of overly generous salary increases and allowing teachers and administrators to avoid paying a meaningful amount toward their health care benefits. Now, as recent weeks have shown, and Monday’s meeting confirmed, the district’s back is against the wall and there’s no Gov. Ed Rendell to bail it out with ever-increasing school subsidies.

Rendell sought to increase subsidies despite the state’s worsening fiscal situation. Gov. Tom Corbett, since taking office, has said that fiscal realities can no longer be ignored.

The school board, faced with an estimated $6.3 million 2012-13 budget deficit, has identified ways to shrink the shortfall. Plans include not replacing 13 retiring teachers and two administrators, eliminating noontime kindergarten buses and crossing guards, refinancing a bond issue, in addition to raising the property tax.

But the board also will be considering possible cuts in athletics, foreign languages and the gifted program — cuts that, if implemented, would have a negative impact on students, again the most important component of Butler’s school system.

If they haven’t already done so, members of the new Butler School Board must focus on the cumulative effect of labor contracts, especially the sweetheart contracts of the past decade. They must reflect on how much stronger the school district’s fiscal picture would now be if teachers had gotten pay raises reflecting the local economic picture, not what teachers in richer districts were receiving.

Those board members must reflect on the local cost of the deferred pay raise teachers will be receiving under the state Legislature’s misguided 2001 pension action. Teachers’ pensions were increased by 25 percent. As a result, the district contribution to the Public School Employees Retirement System has increased to 12.5 percent of the district’s payroll, from 8 percent.

According to an article in the May 8 Butler Eagle, the contribution is to increase to 16 percent for the 2013-14 fiscal year.

Without a state law limiting the size of school districts’ tax increases, Butler taxpayers probably would be shouldering a much bigger tax hike than two mills for the coming fiscal year. Meanwhile, there would be less incentive to stand firm against teacher pay increases well above the rate of inflation, if the district were engaged in contract negotiations with teachers.

For many years, the phrase “increased education funding” has meant, for the most part, accommodating teachers’ pay and benefits demands, not expanded educational opportunities for students. Now, with a tougher, more cost-conscious administration in Harrisburg, and teachers’ refusals to agree to meaningful contract give-backs, it’s the students who will feel the effects of the money shortfall. In the Butler district, closing of an elementary school might even be a possibility.

Labor peace should be a goal in all school districts, but it should not come at the expense of eroding students’ opportunities. Unfortunately, that’s now at hand — and past boards and the teachers union are to blame.