Teachers Union Pitches Buyouts

The teachers union is hoping a buyout package can help close a looming budget deficit and avoid the possibility of layoffs.

Dave Cicarella, the union president, outlined that proposed retirement incentive in a Tuesday letter to his members, a day after the Board of Education paused the involuntary transfer of 53 teachers whose current positions would be eliminated.

In a more modest version of last year’s offer, the buyout would give veteran teachers a cash bonus and healthcare benefits to retire early, as long as they’re willing to take the payout over several years.

“It’s part of the mitigation process that could involve transfers and still the possibility of layoffs. We don’t know what’s going to come. But we think this is really helpful,” Cicarella said. ​“It doesn’t cause any pain to anyone. It helps the city, and these teachers get a little incentive. We tried to keep it modest, but at the same time give a reasonable incentive. For teachers wavering on retirement, this may be a deciding factor.”

The incentive works primarily by adding 16 extra sick days to their maximum 64 days of banked sick time. That’s the equivalent of $7,730 for a top-step educator with a master’s degree.

According to a draft of the union’s proposal, teachers wouldn’t be able to cash out any of their sick time in the first year after retirement. Instead, they could receive up to a 20-day payout, the equivalent of $9,660 annually for a top-step educator with a master’s degree, over each of the next four years.

Additionally, for five years, the district would pay a $130 monthly stipend for five years towards the Medicare costs of teachers over 65 years old. In total, that’s the equivalent of a $7,800 bonus.

“All buy-out proposals must be a ​‘win-win’ scenario,” Cicarella wrote. ​“In our case a substantial, verifiable savings for the employer and a financial incentive for teachers to retire early.”

While nothing is finalized yet, the teachers union has started asking teachers who might take the deal. Cicarella said that, in a normal year, less than 40 teachers choose to retire, but he is hoping the buyout will incentivize close to 100 teachers to send in their papers.

At that rate, Cicarella estimated roughly $7 million savings next year.

That calculation is largely based on the $42,305 salary differential between the high and low ends of the step schedule for a teacher with a master’s degree, as set out in the union contract.

For instance, the district could save $1.80 million by altogether eliminating 20 positions through attrition, $1.69 million by replacing 40 positions with brand-new teachers, and $1.24 million by delaying sick-day payouts for 40 retirees.

Nothing is finalized yet, Cicarella added, because the Board of Education will have a chance to confirm the savings once it signs teachers up, so that any savings will be a real number, not just a projection.

“They can take those names and salaries and run the numbers,” Cicarella said.

In the letter, he added, ​“To get an agreement, we agreed to do the leg work on the sign-up and also give them a ​‘fail-safe.’ That is that upon their review and vetting of the savings, the BOE maintains the option to agree to the proposal or not,” he wrote. ​“The next step is to draft a memorandum of understanding between the BOE and the NHFT that delineates this proposal and sets up the logistics for the sign-up.”

School officials said that their estimate is ​“much more conservative,” closer to $2 million. But they added that they’re willing to move ahead with the idea to see who signs up.

“We’re taking the next step to see who might sign up,” said Michael Pinto, the district’s chief operating officer. ​“That will inform decisions about what the potential savings are and what the parameters of a final agreement would look like.”

Earlier this year, Superintendent Carol Birks said that closing next fiscal year’s projected $31 million shortfall could result in the reduction of 172 teaching positions. She told alders that she believed she could develop a ​“district-wide staffing model” that could save $12 million without any layoffs.

But in the months since, Birks has not released a line-item budget that provides even minimal detail about where the money is going, outside of 13 broad categories. That’s led to persistent doubts about whether the deficit is as big as administrators have warned.

After Monday’s board meeting, Birks said that her team would be releasing a site-based budget within two weeks, now that the state budget has been finalized.

A newly appointed Deficit Mitigation Committee, a 15-member panel co-chaired by Jamell Cotto and Jill Kelly, will likely use that document as a guide for their own budget-balancing recommendations.