Average Raise Of 4.63% –

School Board, Union

Finalize New Contract

By Steve Bigham

The Newtown teachers’ union and the Board of Education have agreed on a contract that will provide local teachers with an average salary increase of 4.63 percent over the next three years. The new deal will increase the school board’s budget by nearly $1 million a year for each of the next three years.

Contract negotiations, which began in August, were completed earlier this month, prompting Superintendent of Schools John R. Reed to say the school system appears to be “positioned well” to meet the town’s educational needs for the next three years. The contract goes into effect next August.

According to the school board, the new contract accomplishes three objectives. First, it improves the district’s compensation plan to help it attract and retain a highly qualified teaching staff. Not all teachers will receive 4.6 percent increases. The pay raises are of different amounts based on the teachers’ years of service. It should also be noted that the contract calls for extra pay for extra duty.

The contract also implements a new basis for cost sharing of health insurance and increases the employees’ level of contribution.

Lastly, the new contract removes the early retirement incentive plan. This change was important because the school board has been contractually obligated to offer early retirement once every three years for the last 24 years, according to Board of Education Chair Elaine McClure. Most teachers were able to “dovetail” their retirement plans to this offering of the stipend and in reality, the stipend became more like severance pay than an incentive for early retirement.

In recent years, Dr Reed has complained that Newtown has lost quality teachers to higher paying school systems, and while this contract does not “make up ground” with towns like Ridgefield, it does prevent the gap from further accelerating. The recent settlements in Connecticut are averaging in the 4.75 to 5 percent range in net costs.

“People need to understand it has become a sellers’ market for teachers,” Dr Reed said.

Union President Phil Cruz, a teacher at Head O’ Meadow School, said the new contract puts Newtown in line with what teachers earn in towns like Monroe, Trumbull, Brookfield, and Bethel.

“The union is very pleased with what has taken place. It was a very good negotiation. The union respected the board’s positions and the board respected the union’s positions. It was a win-win situation for both the Board of Education and Newtown Federation of teachers,” Mr Cruz said. “We wanted to make sure that Newtown teachers found it worthwhile to stay here, instead of just staying here for a few years and then moving on to greener pastures.”

Council Backing Likely

On Monday, the school board presented the proposed contract to the Legislative Council’s finance committee, which after two hours of discussion voted to recommend that the full council not take any action on it. By not taking any action, the council will have effectively agreed to adopt the contract.

However, as was made clear Monday night, the council does not expect these kinds of increases in other areas of the Board of Education budget. Finance committee chairman John Kortze told school board officials Dr Reed, Mrs McClure, and Business Director Ron Bienkowski that they should keep in mind this is going to be a tough budget season,.

“I think the committee’s position is that we took no action on the contract expecting that it would be adopted, but we also articulated very specifically to Ron, Elaine, and John that it’s going to be a very difficult year upcoming and there’s only so much water in the bucket and there’s a lot of areas in the town that need money,” Mr Kortze said this week.

Finance committee member Melissa Pilchard said she was told that the contract is a reasonable settlement. Therefore, she voted to recommend it be approved. However, she added, there is only so much money to draw from.

“If they get it all in salaries, they can’t have it in other places,” she said, pointing out that the school board is asking for some $18 million in its capital budget this year.

Mr Kortze said the town is facing everything it faced last year. The only difference this year is the economy is now slowing down.

“Going forward, we have to be very conscious of that,” he said. “The point we tried to drive home is that once you approve a contract, it’s not in the past, it affects the total picture going forward. It will require a lot more effort on the part of both the town and the Board of Education side than normal.”

Mr Kortze said the finance committee plans to create guidelines for what the town can and can’t afford before this year’s budgets are finalized so that everyone has a clear understanding of where they need to end up.

“The town has had a cushion of revenue the past few years. However, that luxury may no longer be there if the economy is slowing,” he said.

The next finance committee meeting will focus on the town’s upcoming budget, including the long-term indebtedness and looking at costs associated with the proposed 5/6 school and Fairfield Hills.