Administrators’ Contract Settled

By Larissa Lytwyn

Thirteen Newtown school administrators will give up a total of about $150 each on renegotiated three-year contracts that were settled on the evening of December 7. Following an acceptance of the stipulated agreement, both school and town government officials expressed positive feelings about the outcome.

“We are very pleased that this issue has been resolved and hope that this agreement effectively meets town needs,” said Superintendent of Schools Evan Pitkoff.

Board of Finance Chairman John Kortze and Legislative Council Chairman Will Rogers were both subpoenaed to be present and observed the process. Both were available to testify on behalf of the town, but were not called upon to do so, according to Mr Kortze.

Following the meeting Mr Rodgers expressed that he had no regrets about the Legislative Council’s decision to reject the initial contract and force the issue to binding arbitration if necessary.

“Inserting another level to the process certainly had its ramifications,” Mr Rodgers said. “I see this final outcome as a positive for the town.”

Mr Rodgers said he hopes from a financial perspective, the council’s actions will have greater impact in the long term.

“From a dollars and cents standpoint, the decision (to reject the contract) was always about more than these 13 administrators. It was about the message we wanted to send going forward and in relation to the bigger picture,” he said.

Dr Pitkoff said the school board and representatives from the state Administrators’ Union reviewed and ultimately amended the contract’s “areas of dispute,” specifically, administrators’ salaries and insurance co-payments.

The Board of Education recognizes the Newtown Association of School Administrators as the exclusive bargaining representative of all administrative employees, including the district’s 13 principals, assistant principals, and Director of Pupil Personnel Services Mike Regan, eligible under Section 10-153b(a)(1) of the Connecticut General Statutes.

The positions of superintendent, assistant superintendent, business manager, and director of buildings and grounds are not included in the administrators’ contract.

The Board of Education initially approved the contract during its September 21 board meeting. At that time, administrators were given a wage increase of 3.75 percent for each of the next three academic years and a graduating annual insurance co-payment increase from 15, to 16, to 17 percent.

That initial administrators contract was voted down by Newtown’s Legislative Council on October 20.

Under the new stipulated agreement, the insurance co-payment percentage increases will remain the same. But while administrators’ wages will increase by 3.75 percent for the 2005-06 year, raises will be 3.70 percent for the 2006-07 school year and 3.65 percent for the 2007-08 school year.

First Selectman Herbert Rosenthal gave the administrators credit for not taking advantage of an opportunity to exploit an already generous benefit and salary package.

“It is fortunate that after the town played Russian roulette by rejecting the original contract that we dodged the bullet,” he said in a statement. “The settlement is marginal, and the small savings were probably consumed by arbitration.”

Mr Rosenthal went on to express his concern that members of the Board of Education had set the bar for negotiating higher for themselves, and for upcoming town negotiations, by the magnitude of raises granted to nonunion administrative leadership last summer.

Between the arbitrator and attorney fees, this arbitration had to have cost $10,000 – at least that’s the number we were told by the Board of Ed,” Mr Rosenthal said. “And the overall settlement represents less than $2,000 in a salary package worth a million-and-a-half-dollars.”

As far as the Finance Board was concerned, Mr Kortze said the members had already endorsed the original contract, and that any additional savings to taxpayers was a bonus.

“The bottom line is, we liked the original proposal,” he said. “Developing a contract that incorporated increasing insurance co-payments and percentages was our goal. And while it appears the adjustments were very minimal, that minute difference still represents a better place than where we were before, so I think I speak for the board when I say that we like it even more.”

 “The biggest parts of the contract are the insurance co-payments and salaries,” said Board of Education Secretary Andy Buzzi, who represented the school board during negotiations. “What we ended up doing is asking the administrators for a concession,” he continued. “To the administrators’ credit, they agreed, recognizing what was important to the town. We retained our insurance contributions, which are very significant. It’s a significant contribution to the town by the administrators. It makes them leaders in their professions.”

By calculating the difference between the original raises granted on a $100,000 salary, an approximation of the average administrators salary, and the newly accepted figures, each administrator will sacrifice a little more than $50 each year of the three year agreement.

Mr Buzzi continued, “I was very happy that we were able to resolve this situation in this manner.”

He said he was looking forward to presenting the revised contract to Legislative Council at its next meeting on December 14. If the council chooses to endorse the new concessions, the new contract goes into effect.

However, if the council again rejects the contract, it will force a binding arbitration process where the final outcome would be taken out of the hands of municipal officials and placed into the hands of a state arbitrator. The final judgment of that arbitrator would be binding by state statute.

(Reporter John Voket contributed to this story.)