1.  When is the first day of school in Fall of 2005 for students of
the Springfield Public Schools ("SPS")?  What about the first day of
school for employees/teachers?

2.  How are the SPS governed?  There is a School Committee; is that
Committee autonomous or does it report to another division of the
local government?

3.  Who are the members of the School Committee; what are their terms of office?

4.  Recently, I believe during the 2004-2005 school year, there was a
dispute between the teachers employed by the SPS and the SPS
Administration.  Approximately 300 teachers left the SPS as a result
of this dispute, which I believe had to do with pay and working
conditions.  As a result of this dispute, SPS offered a "signing
bonus" to teachers who were hired to teach during the upcoming school
year.  Please provide some brief background about this dispute: Who
were the key players?  What were the arguments put forth by both
sides?  Why did the SPS decide to go with a "signing bonus" approach
rather than offering the teachers more money?

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 27 Aug 2005 12:39 PDT

I am interested in attempting to answer these questions.  However, if
I find all of the answers but one, I won't be able to post a complete
answer.

You might wish to split this question into more than one question,
posted separately.  Alternatively, you might adjust the price of this
question.  See:

http://answers.google.com/answers/help.html#howtospecify [under "Break
up multi-part questions"]

http://answers.google.com/answers/pricing.html

How would you like to proceed?