Christopher Peak Photo
Union Prez Dave Cicarella, at school board meeting last month.
A modest retirement incentive wasn’t attractive enough to convince New Haven’s most experienced teachers to call it quits early.
The end to that idea was announced at Monday afternoon’s Finance & Operations Committee meeting at the school district’s Meadow Street headquarters, as administrators said the proposal hadn’t earned enough sign-ups.
The contract buyout would have given veteran teachers a cash bonus and healthcare benefits to retire early, as long as they were willing to take the payout over several years.
The teachers union pitched the idea to avoid the possibility of layoffs, as the district confronts a $30 million deficit during the fiscal year that started on Monday. About one-third of that deficit is expected to be made up by the eventual receipt of state grants.
The union’s plan could have freed up about $4 million in next year’s budget by altogether eliminating 20 positions through attrition, replacing 40 top-step positions with brand-new teachers, and by delaying 40 expected sick-day payouts, though school officials thought even that was optimistic.
As the union collected names, only 29 teachers volunteered to take the buyout — far fewer than the 100 teachers whom the union had hoped would sign up to make the extra costs worthwhile for the district and even the 40 teachers who typically retire each year.
“At just 29 participants, the plan simply does not generate salary savings,” Mike Pinto, the district’s chief operating officer, wrote in a Friday email to the union leadership.
Pinto said that the potential savings kicked in “only after 40 retirements,” which he said was “the number of retirees at the end of fiscal year 2018, when no incentive was in place.”
“I would like to thank you for your efforts,” Pinto wrote. “I believe the NHFT has negotiated in good faith to develop the plan; and I think you have worked in good faith to secure participants.”
The incentive would have worked primarily by adding 16 extra days to a teacher’s maximum 64 days of banked sick time. That’s the equivalent of $7,730 more for a top-step educator with a master’s degree.
That buyout for all the teacher’s sick time, including all the banked days, would skip the first year, then be paid out in up to four annual installments.
Additionally, 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.
Dave Cicarella, the union president, did not respond to a phone call and a text message on Monday evening.
Pat DeLucia, the union’s vice-president, wrote in the email to Pinto that he was “disappointed in the sign up,” but he added that the negotiations with Central Office had been a good start for “working together in the future.”
While the retirement incentive wasn’t enough to send senior teachers packing, younger teachers — especially ones certified to teach in shortage areas — have been putting in notice that they don’t plan on staying in New Haven.
During the last three months, as the school year drew to a close, the district’s human resources office has been getting more than four resignation letters for every one retirement letter.
Among the 59 resignations submitted since this March were 13 special-education teachers, 7 math teachers and 2 math coaches, 6 science teachers, 2 bilingual teachers and 1 TESOL teacher — all subjects where Connecticut schools struggle to find qualified teachers, sometimes leaving hundreds of spots unfilled.
What new teacher would want a job at NHPS? Ten years ago, NHPS was on the leading edge of education reform, out-performing other urban systems and making the most of new federal and state dollars. Today, those dollars are going away, and management is chaotic. Moreover the funding, and possibly the management chaos, looks like its only going to get worse in the near future.