Hernandez: End ​“Last Hired, First Fired” For Teachers

Branford Schools Superintendent Hamlet Hernandez endorses an educational movement to end the practice of automatically firing the newest teachers when school districts implement layoffs. Currently the way teachers are dismissed is last one hired, first one fired. 

How Connecticut teachers are dismissed is determined by collective bargaining agreements and by tenure and seniority laws at the state level, he noted in an interview.

Across the country efforts are underway to change the way that teachers are hired and fired. Just yesterday Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law a sweeping measure that may well restructure the teaching profession in his state. The newly enacted law links a teacher’s tenure, hiring, and job security to performance, rather than to seniority. In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said he will grapple with education issues, including how schools are financed, in the 2012 legislative session.

Hernandez made his observations and stated his position in an interview following his decision to reinstate a newly hired John B. Sliney elementary school physical education teacher whose dismissal had ignited support from a community of parents and children.

Had Hernandez had more flexibility in deciding which of 16 teachers and staff to lay off when he announced the school budget last winter, Branford might have avoided months of agony and vocal protests by parents and students who sought to reinstate Marco Imperati, the physical education teacher at Sliney and Keith Traver, a part-time music teacher at Walsh Intermediate School who also faced dismissal.

In an interview with the Eagle, Hernandez said that instead of automatically firing the last teacher hired, he would favor removing those teachers needing ‘‘ intensive assistance.’’ In other words, he said, the first teachers who need to be removed should be those who are having serious trouble teaching. ​“If staff reductions need to be made, the first individuals we should be reducing are those individuals on intensive assistance. Those individuals should go first.”

At a joint Board of Education Finance-Personnel Committee meeting last week, Hernandez announced his plan to restore one full-time physical education teacher and while he did not name names, Imperati is the only physical education dismissed this year. Sliney parents, led by Nancy Kendrick, mounted a sustained, time-consuming effort to keep Imperati in his job. Hernandez also asked the BOE to rehire a music teacher for one day a week. That position will enable band students at the intermediate school to make the transition to band at the high school level.

The Board of Education is expected to formally approve Hernandez’s actions approval at its June meeting Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Branford High School’s library. The joint committee gave informal consent last week.

Besides cutting teachers Hernandez might have considered offering retirement packages to teachers and administrators. But this was not the year to do that, he said.

He said he had done that when he was at the Hamden school district and he wouldn’t rule it out at another time. Guilford has offered retirement incentives in the past; so has Branford, he said. ​“In some instances it works, in some instances it does not work. With what we were dealing with this year, we did not have anything to offer. We are not dismissive of that; if conditions were appropriate, it would be looked at.”

Hernandez also announced last week that final numbers show that $416,000 allocated in the areas of salaries and utilities, among others, for the current school year has not been spent. Hernandez noted the amount was less than one percent of the total $49.17 million budget.

This is not uncommon, he said, because school officials typically do not know until the end of the school year in June, long after the budget has been proposed, what has been spent and what hasn’t.

In the past the issue has arisen repeatedly.

For example more than two years ago, about 80 mostly new teachers, received pink slips, creating turmoil in the school system before all the facts were in. At most maybe a dozen jobs needed to be cut. Kids and parents got up at public meetings to plead for their favorite teacher’s job. In the end, in June, all the teachers stayed. Last year there was a break — the school system had received additional federal funds. There were no public outcries. But this year the public parade was revived and emotional tugging went into high gear.

Hernandez said restoring the two positions or parts of them was not without risk but he was willing to take the risk. He said he listened to the parents and children who mounted a fierce campaign to keep these teachers.

Looking back at this year’s playbook, a re-run of kids and parents tugging at heartstrings at various public meetings, there was one major difference. First, Hernandez made major cuts at the outset of the budget process in January and did not deviate from them. He acted on two crucial pieces of knowledge. Enrollment in the Branford public schools was going down, and the district had too many teachers. He acknowledged the first but did not publicly mention the second. With the exception of restoring Imperati’s job, he achieved his goal

Hernandez said most of the $416,000 reallocation of funds came from the larger categories, such as salaries. Any number of factors may lead to budgetary changes, he said, including unexpected resignations, long term leaves, unpaid leaves and docked pay. Whatever the reason, the school system found itself with leftover funds and shifted those funds to next year’s budget.

These funds, Hernandez said, are not a surplus. ​“This is not a surplus. Surplus means I had additional money. This is all within my appropriation.”

What it amount to is that this year’s budget will help to defray the additional $325,000 cut that the Board of Finance (BOF) imposed upon the Board of Education earlier this year.

The BOF, perhaps mindful of past June BOE budget reallocations, chose a figure that comes remarkably close to the funds defrayed to next year’s budget. It now appears the BOF was right on the money.

Board of Education Chairman Frank Carrano told the Eagle that about $300,000 of the $416,000 would help pre-pay ​“for next year’s budget with money available in this year’s budget.” He said the board needed to look at special education. ​“We are running a $100,000 deficit there.”

One new fact that Hernandez learned during the parent protests was that his own school district’s elementary schools were below the state’s guidelines in providing students with physical education classes. The numbers were very low, he said. He told the Eagle that grades K‑2 receive 41 minutes a week of phys ed, and grades 3 – 4 receive two 41-minute periods. It is not at all clear why the central office did not know about this problem.

The town has no say at all over the school budget. And the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) is well aware of that. The issue of trusting the board of education’s numbers came up again this year as it has in the past.

Getting a real handle in real time on the actual budget numbers is still an open and unresolved issue between the RTM and the school board. That became clear when the RTM refused to put a stamp of approval on a section of a large fuel tank clean-up bill at the Mary T. Murphy elementary school earlier this year.
 
Although the bill has been paid, the RTM wasn’t going to go long with certain billing numbers. As it turned out the superintendent’s finance staff also questioned the same numbers and they told the RTM that at various committee meetings.

When it came time to present their information to the full RTM, however, no school official showed up. The BOE was meeting elsewhere that night, but might have sent a representative. The RTM groused about trust and turned down a section of one of the bills. 

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