Board members Darnell Goldson, Joe Rodriguez at Tuesday’s vote.
Students’ tearful speeches, parents’ proposed alternatives, a union’s last-ditch buyout suggestion: none of it worked. A week after being given hope that their jobs might be saved, two dozen full-time educators were still told they’re out of work after all.
The Board of Education voted at a Tuesday night special meeting at Celentano School to lay them off.
Citing the need to place faculty before school starts next week, they unanimously approved Superintendent Carol Birks’s recommendation to lay off 15 school counselors, five library media specialists and four physical education teachers, all of whom don’t have any other certifications.
Christopher Peak Photo
Carol Birks: Teachers need to know where they’ll be next week.
Another 16 employees who initially received pink slips in the mail — half of them social studies, literature and business teachers at the high schools — have all returned to work or found other jobs.
“We believe in and value the people who work in our organization, but we have to make some difficult decisions,” Birks said before the vote. “We will continue to work closely with the teachers union, as well as all other unions, to see if we can come up with some additional savings. But at this time, to ensure that we are ready for school to begin on Aug. 30, we have to advise our staff what their assignments are going to be as we continue to engage in negotiations.”
Celentano’s cafeteria was packed with people as administrators awaited their new positions, counselors and librarians came out to support their colleagues, and parents wondered what would happen to their kids. Ministers and politicians mingled.
Three board members call in their votes.
They listened; they didn’t get to speak up this time. Unlike last week’s meeting, when the board tabled a decision on the layoffs after hearing heartfelt testimony, this meeting was over in less than 20 minutes, without any comment from the public or much debate among the board members.
Most of the negotiation had gone on long before the meeting started. The special meeting had initially been scheduled for Monday afternoon, but it was pushed back to give the board members an extra day to figure out what to do.
On Tuesday afternoon, just before the meeting, two board members, Ed Joyner and Joe Rodriguez, moderated a sit-down between the district administration and the union leadership. The discussion focused on a buyout plan to try to avoid the layoffs. Birks said she was open to the idea, but she wanted more time to crunch the numbers.
Meanwhile, Darnell Goldson lined up the other votes to make sure that the system would be ready for classes to start. As of Tuesday morning, he said, he thought he only had three votes. Eventually the board voted unanimously, even winning over Nico Rivera, the non-voting student representative who had spoken out against cuts.
“None of us like this, but we knew that we had to do it,” Goldson said. “For the entire week, I had to pull members to the side, because everyone wanted to be able to say, ‘I didn’t vote for this.’ But as a leader, I had to make sure we had the votes to make it pass.”
Alternatives Considered
The reduction in teaching staff will save the district roughly $1.2 million. The teachers union is hoping it can convince the administration to find another way to reach that total.
“Our position on the layoffs is unambiguous,” Dave Cicarella, the union president, wrote in a recent letter to his membership. “All teachers that were laid off should be returned to their positions. Period.”
As an alternative, the union has proposed a buyout, along with furlough days. By offering continued healthcare benefits and a sick-day cash-out, Cicarella said, he hoped the schools could encourage veteran teachers earning higher salaries to call it quits early.
According to a draft of the union’s proposal, teachers could receive a payout for their saved-up sick days. Over three years, the district would pay cash for all their days, along with an additional 30 percent bonus.
For instance, if a teacher had banked the maximum 64 sick days allowed by contract, she’d receive compensation for 19 extra days with a buyout. Spread over three years, that would mean an annual payment of around $13,300.
The added healthcare benefits would be split by age. Teachers over 65 years old, who qualify for Medicare, would receive a $400 monthly stipend for six years, while younger teachers could remain on the medical plan at a quarter of the cost of the annual premium, usually around $2,700 for an individual and $5,400 for a couple.
In an initial estimate, Cicarella calculated that the retirement incentives could save about $910,000 this year. Additional savings would accumulate each year afterwards, totaling around $3.0 million within seven years.
Cicarella said the administration hasn’t dismissed the idea. “They’re absolutely looking at it,” he said. “They want more time now to look at the numbers.”
He said he’s hoping that, between those incentives and other cuts to the administration, teachers will be invited back. “They should absolutely hold out hope,” he said. “It’s painful, no question, to have 24 of my colleagues still out there, but I’m cautiously optimistic.”
Finding The Rest
Dave Cicarella.
Even after the closure of three schools and the reassignment of faculty, the district still needs to make up approximately $8.4 million, putting it more than halfway toward closing the $19.3 million deficit that was originally projected.
Birks said she has a plan to save an additional $3.6 million by maximizing grants, cutting back on utility bills, buying fewer supplies, and limiting bus trips. But she hasn’t disclosed her plans for closing the rest of the deficit.
“It is our legal responsibility to close our budget,” Birks said. “People have said to me before, ‘We went over all the time.’ We’re in a difficult place right now. The city was able to cover those cuts in the past; however, this administration does not have the resources to incur the additional costs. As a result, we have to be aggressive about how we close the structural deficit.”
As Birks tries to find additional money, Cicarella said that his union won’t consider taking a vote on furlough days unless the layoffs are rescinded.
He also also pressed Birks to hold to her additional commitment to eliminate 25 administrative positions; currently only 14 have been cut. (On Tuesday, the board also approved the transfer of seven assistant principals to fill vacancies, though it tabled Tina Mitchell’s move from Fair Haven to Hillhouse, at Birks’s request.) Goldson said he hadn’t spoken yet with the head of the administrators union, but he believes they’ve been working on ideas for givebacks. He said he expected that there will be “savings,” not cuts.