Parents Oppose Teacher Layoffs

When the Representative Town Meeting (RTM ) meets tomorrow night to decide on its 2011-12 budget, it may well face a hostile encounter with parents, teachers and school officials who say they want town funds to be transferred to the school system in order to alleviate additional teacher layoffs.

This latest argument emerged at a meeting of the RTM’s Education Committee last week despite the fact that the schools superintendent and the Board of Education have rejected re-opening a costly teacher’s contract totaling more than $1 million in this, its final year. Nor were efforts made to obtain willing concessions from teachers or administrators. Branford employs about 258 teachers. 

Schools Superintendent Hamlet Hernandez, who knows what it takes to reopen a teachers’ contract because he did it when he was in Hamden, did not want to undertake a renegotiation of the current costly contract when a new one was about to get underway. Negotiations for the next contract, which he suggests will be far more stringent than this one, begin in August. Branford enrolls 3,592 students, but enrollment is declining. 

Hernandez and BOE members, parents and teachers are expected to show up at the RTM’s budget meeting to be held at the Canoe Brook Senior Center Tuesday at 8 p.m. The school budget makes up more than half of the proposed $94.04 million budget. While the Board of Finance (BOF) cut nearly $1 million from the proposed town and Board of Education budgets, it still left taxpayers with a 3.32 percent hike.

At the RTM Education Committee meeting last week Hernandez was asked if negotiations with the teachers had been reopened. ​“Negotiation is a legal term,” he said. ​“There were no negotiations. And I am not trying to be fresh. I am trying to be very, very clear. Under the statute, under the collective bargaining agreement, there have been no negotiations.” But he said he has spoken to the leadership of the Branford Education Assn., the teachers’ union, about various issues and will continue to. ​“Do I speak just on matters on finances? No….No we have not negotiated. Do we talk, absolutely we talk.’’

In the absence of any givebacks, be they through costly step increases from year to year or other teacher pay, i.e., extra-curricular activity funding, Hernandez said he would ​“compress” services but not programs. That means there might be an extra kid or two in a classroom and other belt-tightening yet to be announced.

The BOE develops an incremental budget each year, using the previous budget as a base. It does not use a zero-based budget system that starts from zero and examines the entire budget, not just the proposed increases. 

Before the BOF cut roughly $325,000 in additional funds from the BOE budget, Hernandez had cut roughly 8.9 teachers plus non-certified staff. This number is not cast in stone. That is because retirements and enrollment figures are not known in May.

How were these teachers selected? It is not clear how these choices are made though generally the last ones hired are typically the first fired. What is clear is that two of the teachers appear to be very much needed at their schools. One teacher, Keith Traver, is a music teacher at Walsh Intermediate School. Another is Marco Imperati, a physical education teacher at John B. Sliny Elementary School, whose dismissal has prompted petitions from parents and predictably, outcries of parental distress at public meetings.
 
In this orchestrated tugging at heartstrings — or in this instance, strings or chorus, or athletics — the BOE’s old playbook was back in operation. Last year there was no need because of additional federal funding. Last month another group of students made their appearance before the BOE. This time it was to retain Traver and Imperati. 

Two years ago, at budget time, when the BOE faced cuts, 80 teachers, mostly new teachers, got pink slips, creating turmoil in the system before the facts were in. In the end, they stayed. But not before kids got up at public meetings to plead for their favorite teacher’s job. Then there were threats that the hockey team was too expensive to keep. In the end, hockey stayed. And then there was the threat to the music teachers, a perennial hit because the loss of chorus or orchestra or anything in between gets parents really upset. 

The town has no say at all over the school budget, which came in at $49.1 million, the highest in its history. The school superintendent and his staff decide what to cut and where. At the RTM’s education committee last week, parents, teachers and school officials made a plea not to cut any more from its operating budget than the roughly $325,000 the Board of Finance had already cut. Hernandez told the Eagle no final decisions have been made on additional personnel cuts to cover the additional $325,000. He said he would not rule out other places in the school budget to cut.

Kyle Nelson (pictured), the vice-president of the PTA at Walsh, told the RTM committee that he disagrees with the decision by the Board of Finance to cut an additional $350,000 from the school system’s operating budget. At the same time, he said, ​“the town went up 20,000.” From this variation Nelson concluded that the RTM should create ​“a shared sacrifice situation before any additional cuts are considered. And that would mean that town departments pick up some of the cuts slated for the board of education. The music program is of great value to the community. The sports teams, the music program, the theatre program, the choir singers, what the high school does annually are remarkable. And guess who benefits? Not just the students, not just the parents, not just the staff, but the entire community.”

Frank Carrano, the chair of the BOE, said this year’s budget has been especially painful for him. He said it was particularly difficult for him and his colleagues to eliminate 16 teaching positions. Carrano, who led the teachers union in New Haven years ago, said: ​“This is something I have never done in my entire life. And it wasn’t something that came easily to me. But we thought what we did would be recognized by the town as a valiant effort to do exactly what Rep. [Joshua] Brooks says he is compelled to do it. And that is we tried to balance our needs against the needs of the town. If we hadn’t done it we would have brought in a six percent hike in our budget and the town and Board of Finance and the RTM would have to explain to parents why you were taking away all these wonderful opportunities for the children.

“We didn’t do that. So what happens in return? We go to the Board of Finance and they cut $325,000 above what we reduced. And now I am hearing about some magical $100,000 reduction … cut further. I am really appalled at that. I have to tell you. Because the message to this board is that it doesn’t matter to the town what we have done. It doesn’t matter to the town how thoughtful and considerate we are because the budget we bring to you is going to be cut anyway. Excuse me, another $100,000 out of our operating budget… will be terrible. I hope that none of you wants to take responsibility for that.”

He ended to a round of loud applause from the dozens of people in the room. 

Mary Grande, a new member of the Board of Education and a former RTM member, was not enchanted by the idea of dividing the town against the school system. ​“We don’t want to become divided against other departments. We don’t want to go back to them and say you need to make cuts. We are a collaborative town. We have recreation, we work together. We don’t want to say to those departments, we want to take away from you. We can’t punish them for the economy. I am saying give us what the Board of Finance gave us.”

She was asking that there be no more cuts in the operating budget. After many people spoke, including David Gruendel, the head of the teachers’ union , other teachers and parents, the RTM education committee gave its response.

Richard Greenalch, Jr., a former member of the Board of Education and a longtime RTM member, said the school system faced a ​“perfect storm” this year. He said it no longer could rely on high federal grants received over the last two years. He pointed to the economic situation, with high unemployment and a ​“feeling of uncertainty.” 

He pointed to the teachers contract. ​“And we are also facing the last year of a three year contract that was passed before the full depths of the current recession from which we are emerging had manifested itself. I will plead guilty. I voted for the contract at the time; my party (the Republican Party) did not .That was what was negotiated. It was not the intention of the board of education to reopen negotiations this year. Frankly, I would have liked to have looked at all contracts throughout the entire town. It is not an option at this point.” 

He said he didn’t see shared sacrifice on the part of the town. ​“Kyle brought this out and so do others. I didn’t see any other town departments cutting positions. Here we had the BOE proposed cuts. I didn’t see any of that on the town side….”

Greenalch voted against any further cuts to the Board’s operating budget. Claire Torelli, who is not a member of the education committee but does serve on the RTM, said from her seat in the audience: ​“I think this operating budget should be left alone. I will vote for the budget the way it is now when it comes to the floor of the RTM.” Torelli is employed by the school system.

The four RTM members on the education committee voted no cuts at all for the board of education’s operating budget. Brooks abstained because he did not know what capital cuts, if any, might come about at the Ways and Means committee and he said he believed the taxpayers needed help this year.

As it turned out $74,172 was later cut at Ways and Means meeting (pictured) two days later. Only Sandra Reiners, the chair of Ways and Means, voted in favor of fully funding the school system’s capital budget, which includes new and used computers for students at Walsh and other building needs.

Hernandez (pictured) was not happy.

Maggie Bruno, the chair of the RTM Education committee, said she would only vote if there was a tie. ​“I am not required to vote as chair unless there is a tie.”

But she is entitled to vote if she wants to. Carrano called her on it. ​“You can vote if you want to right? I think it is important for us to know what kind of support we have going into the RTM meeting. This committee needs to be our basis for it. And if you as the chair are not going to support it, I think we need to know that.”

A parent in the audience agreed. She asked Bruno: ​“I would like to know how the chair wants to vote?” But Bruno would not budge. She said she was going to ​“maintain my habit” to vote only in the event of a tie. Carrano shook his head in disbelief as the meeting drew to a close.

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