Central Greene to eliminate teaching positions
Central Greene School Board discusses 2016-17 budget cuts with teachers, support staff and administrators during a Monday night meeting in the library at Margaret Bell Miller Middle School.
Melissa Wilson, center, president of Central Greene’s teachers’ union, discusses 2016-17 budget cuts with the school board, teachers, support staff and administrators during a Monday night meeting in the library at Margaret Bell Middle School.
WAYNESBURG – A machete couldn’t cut through the tension at the Central Greene Finance Committee meeting Monday night as teachers, support staff, administrators and the school board met to discuss district cuts for the 2016-17 school year.
The board is expected to vote today to eliminate eight positions, including placing six teachers on furlough because of budget constraints, and the teachers are begging them not to.
“Aren’t we here to do what’s best for the kids?” said Melissa Wilson, president of the teachers’ union. “We have six teachers on the chopping block. Why are we jumping right to furloughing staff before we have tried every other option?”
If approved during a 6:30 p.m. board meeting in the auditorium of Margaret Bell Miller Middle School, the eight positions would be eliminated, but only six teachers would lose their jobs, including four high school special education teachers and a life skills teacher and an art teacher at the middle school, according to Wilson.
“I had people crying on the phone with me,” she said. “You’re hearing their kids in the background and you’re thinking, ‘You know, this is their livelihood and it’s all getting taken away in one vote of the board.'”
The other two positions are the high school and middle school librarians, according to Superintendent Brian Uplinger.
Board President Andrew Corfont said Monday the vote will not be tabled and board member Kevin Barnhart spoke on behalf of the board when he said, “There’s nobody here who wants to lay off anybody.”
The furloughs are part of $1.4 million the district decided to cut from the tentative 2016-17 budget, which is scheduled to be approved during a June 30 meeting. The board decided cuts were necessary since it still has not received $3.4 million in 2015 taxes owed them from Alpha Natural Resources, which declared bankruptcy in 2015.
“We’re a team here and we have to leave our attitudes at the door and do what’s best for our district,” Corfont said.
The six teachers are the only furloughs discussed, but more could be coming for the custodial staff, Uplinger said.
“There’s always that possibility,” he said. “We’ve had a few retirements, so that’s an opportunity for us to save money by not filling those positions and maybe not needing to put any on furlough then.”
Uplinger said the libraries will remain open, but won’t be staffed by a librarian.
“It would be up to the building principal to see how it could be utilized by the current staff and the students,” he said.
Wilson said the union came up with a list of cost-saving opportunities May 16 the district could have considered before eliminating positions. One idea was giving teachers an incentive to retire.
“They have known all of last year that they were in financial trouble with the Emerald Mine,” she said. “How can you wait until these last few weeks to come up with a plan like this? How can you do this to the students and to these families?”
Bill Speakman, chief negotiator for the teachers’ union, said a retired teacher could potentially save two teaching jobs.
But since the district is in the middle of contract negotiations with the teachers’ union, neither side wanted to discuss incentives publicly. Instead, the district and teachers went into closed negotiations immediately after the committee meeting.
The negotiations stalled in March when the board rejected a tentative agreement the bargaining tables for each side reached. The teachers have been working without a contract since August.
Both sides returned to the table last month and the board suggested pay freezes for the 2016-17 school year. According to Wilson, the union was not happy with that offer.
But pay freezes across the board was another suggestion discussed at the finance meeting. If all of the administrators, teachers and support staff took pay freezes next year, it would mean more than $400,000 in savings, according to preliminary figures discussed Monday.
Some administrators said they would agree to the pay freeze and Thomas Hoy, head of the custodial and support staff team, said he would be willing to take the idea back to his union membership for approval.
“If everybody agreed to that and it saved jobs, I think the majority of our membership would be ok with that,” he said.
But Wilson said she couldn’t speak on behalf of all of the teachers on that issue.
Other cost savings discussed included eliminating funding for extracurricular activities at the middle school, which would save the district roughly $83,000, according to Jim Shargots, director of business affairs.
The teachers’ contract negotiations are expected to continue July 13 and the support staff contract negotiations are just beginning. Hoy said the support staff contract will be up June 30.
The budget committee is expected to meet again, but a date has not yet been finalized.
“We’re trying to get a consensus for what’s important to us and what we can work together on,” Corfont said. “These conversations have to continue.”