What Pink Slips?

(Opinion) The Branford High School hockey team is safe, even though Board of Education Chairman Frank Carrano said weeks ago it might be on the chopping block if budget cuts were not restored.

And remember those 80 young untenured teachers who received pink slips back in February, informing them they would lose their jobs in June? They, too, are safe.

Same with the little strings orchestra that school officials claimed they were going to dump. As expected, strings tugged back hard, and the orchestra was saved.

It turned out that the annual public drama over the town’s school budget may have been more about show than reality. Threats turned out to be scare tactics.

In the end, school administrators and the board rejuggled priorities. They cut back on money for professional development and other programs. They cut supplies and equipment; they consolidated here and there and closed the budget gap.

The Board of Finance actually didn’t end up cutting as much money as it has in the past. Nor in the end did the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) do much ; it pushed mainly to keep the overall $84.4 million budget flat.

First Selectman Unk DaRos looked the other way when it came time for a hefty new teachers contract.

All in all, the school budget’s priorities pretty much stayed intact.

But all these saves came at a price. What was lost in the budget war between the school board and the town, a public battle that played out from January to May, was credibility.

Members of both the Board of the Education and the RTM now openly acknowledge that they do not trust each other or believe what the other says — a reality that extends to parents and students drawn into the annual dance. That is a problem, because the RTM funds 96 percent of the school system’s budget.

Peter Anaclerio, the outgoing president of the Branford Education Association, said this problem must be solved: ​“The bottom line is I don’t fully believe that the RTM trusts the Board of Education and the board doesn’t trust the RTM. This has been a problem that has been embedded for many years. I think a lot of this has to do with the process. I think it is unfair to ask the RTM to make this big of a decision in such a short budget season.”

“What I want to see is ongoing conversations between the RTM, the board of ed and even the teachers union in the off months, knowing that we are in financial crisis and looking at long-term savings plans,” Anaclerio said.

His goal is to end the mistrust between the RTM and the school board ​“and not wait until February to air it out.”

Gail Chapman-Carbone, the Democratic chair of the RTM​’s Administrative Services Committee, and Michael Nardella, a Republican who sits on that committee, both said publicly that there was no accountability for on-line items in the school budget and they would welcome a new approach. These two as well as other RTM members have clearly lost patience with Carrano and the board. Carrano’s term is up this year. He has requested another four-year term. The school board is just as dismayed with the RTM.

Chapman-Carbone said that since education covers more than half the town’s $84.4 million budget, the RTM is entitled to know how it is spent in the same way they know how town departments spend their funds. Carrano said the board is accountable to the state.

Chapman-Carbone said ​“it is time to investigate what needs to be done to change the laws.”

Anaclerio said the RTM as well as the other players in the process need more time to work on the school system’s $46.7 million budget, now the highest in history. Typically the process gets compressed into a three-month period.

The RTM is also looking to find a way to track line items on a monthly basis within the board’s budget. Anaclerio said that is a good idea but what he also hopes to get is an open forum that meets regularly to discuss these issues.

Anaclerio’s successor as president is David Gruendel, who also teaches in the middle school. He said in a recent interview that the teachers union, like the RTM, is often kept in the dark, a situation that precludes rational decision making.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Eagle, Anaclerio suggested an early retirement plan or a retirement incentive that would help taxpayers. In neighboring Guilford, for example, the teachers union recently agreed to an early retirement incentive and also gave up approximately $620,000 in reduced salary increases after citizens voted down the school board’s first budget.

Anaclerio, who teaches fifth grade language arts at the Walsh Intermediate School, said the board was not interested in early retirement plans, an idea he has raised for the last several years. ​“Philosophically they may not want to do it but I believe it will save the town money. That is what other towns have done.”

Carrano, who for many years was the head of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, noted the trust problem at the May RTM meeting when the legislative body voted on the budget.

“It is very unfortunate. I don’t know if it is just historical that has developed over time. But it has been disappointing, especially for Dr. [School Superintendent Kathleen] Halligan (pictured), who has made a very sincere effort to be forthright and, as she keeps saying, transparent with everything we do. But it has been very difficult to improve on that.”

He said there were clearly some RTM members who believe that the school board ​“has all kinds of hidden assets buried in it that we can somehow dig up when we need it. And that’s not true.” Overall, 20 positions were eliminated, some through attrition, some through consolidation and reorganization. In the end, only six teachers actually lost their jobs.

Nor was the taxpayer or the board helped by the Branford Education Association, the teachers union, which Anaclerio heads. They did not give an inch. Earlier in the year the school’s top administrators agreed to forgo salary increases during this economic crisis. They wanted to set an example. But the teachers ignored them.

Once the details of the contract became public, residents became upset. A few weeks later Carrano sought concessions, an idea that despite the economic crisis had not been raised in the early negotiating process with the RTM​’s Education Committee. The union said it would consider concessions. 

When the concessions issue went before the teachers, it was already late May. In the end, the teachers rejected two unpaid furlough days that Carrano asked them to take to help out. They complained that when asked to vote on the furlough days, they were given no information as to whether giving up the upaid days would actually help colleagues keep jobs. Absent the data, they would not budge on concessions.

The failure to provide information has been raised before, especially at the Representative Town Meeting. School officials said they depend in part on retirements that may come in late, that they do not have full information, a recurring problem that by now should have been solved. Carrano has also said ​“there is little communication among the different [town] boards.”

By the time the teachers were asked to vote on the two unpaid furlough days last month, the town’s budget and mill rate had been set — only a day before. So the idea that they might help the taxpayer as opposed to their colleagues was not even an option.

The school administrators union did agree to one furlough day, but requests to other unions were withdrawn when the teachers backed out.

Halligan first unveiled her proposed budget in January, seeking a 3.38 percent increase. Her first budget included the loss of 12.5 positions, primarily because of declining enrollment. Her final budget in May, after the Board of Finance and the RTM acted, came in at $46.74 million, a 2 percent increase over last year’s budget and a loss of roughly six jobs, fewer than originally projected.

Carrano has conceded that the pink slips created great strain within the teaching and student ranks. And the board did not have to take the action as early as it did. It could have waited until April, instead of acting in February. Only two board members, Michael Krause and Peter Berdon, both Republicans, rejected the pink slip decision.

From the time the Board of Education began the budget process in early January to the time it ended in late May, the new $23.6 million teacher’s contract loomed over the process. Would the teachers forgo a year’s salary increase or take other action to help the taxpayer? the Republican RTM members asked.

The teachers’ contract created great hardship for many Branford taxpayers. Nonetheless, both the board and the RTM approved the contract; with hefty salaries and step increases to be distributed in different ways to the 319 teachers at five schools. These increases drove the budget.

There was a way out. The RTM could have rejected the teachers contract and sent it to binding arbitration. Typically towns lose these fights and give up the power to oversee their contract process. But there was evidence that given the fiscal crisis, towns had a good shot to win the arbitration process this year.

For reasons still not fully understood, DaRos was not asked to speak about binding arbitration at the RTM​’s January meeting. Nor did he volunteer his thoughts, an action that would have swayed the Democratic bloc. The next day he told the Eagle that if ever there was a year to bring a contract to arbitration this was the year. He has since stepped back from this position. He now says Branford has more teachers than it needs and the Board of Education should eliminate positions through attrition or other means.

One way, Anaclerio said, is to offer an early retirement plan that he has suggested but so far the board has refused to implement. Anaclerio said that he can only ask that the board offer early retirement. ​“They are the ones that have to do it.” One can get full retirement or 75 percent of one’s salary after working for 37.5 years.

“The great advantage of the early retirement plan is you roll it out early in the fall. By December or January you know how many people are going to take this offer. So now you can plan,” he said.

While the teachers might have held a meeting after the pink slips went out in an effort to discuss the financial crisis hitting the town, they did not because they did not know how much the school budget would be cut by town boards or by teachers and administrators taking retirement. Typically that number is not known until June, making the process iffy from start to finish.

“Until that number comes in we can’t make any final decision,” Anaclerio said.

Moreover, he said, he had to ask ​“if the town was in real trouble with a triple A bond rating and a $12 million dollar undesignated fund balance. This is the chicken and the egg thing that comes through with every negotiation.”

Neither is relevant. Regardless of the bond rating, which has to do with bonds and financial health, not funding schools and the town’s fund balance, which is largely for emergencies, the taxpayers still pay 96 percent of all school expenses and early retirement might be one way to reduce this budget.

So would a zero-based budget system that starts from zero and examines each line, a process the board does not use. It simply looks at proposed increases over last year’s budget. If it adopted a zero based budget concept, it could find other cuts.

Zero based budgeting? Anaclerio didn’t rule it out. ​“But again that is something that has to start now.” ###