Teacher furloughs on hold
Melissa Wilson, president of Central Greene’s teachers’ union, speaks during a school board meeting Tuesday night at the middle school auditorium. The board was going to vote on furloughing six teachers, but removed it from the agenda hours before the meeting.
More than 200 people in green shirts filled Central Greene’s middle school auditorium to show support for teachers during a school board meeting Tuesday night. The board was going to vote on furloughing six teachers, but removed it from the agenda hours before the meeting.
More than 200 people in green shirts filled Central Greene’s middle school auditorium to show support for teachers during a school board meeting Tuesday night. The board was going to vote on furloughing six teachers, but removed it from the agenda hours before the meeting.
Central Greene’s teachers’ union president Melissa Wilson, at center with megaphone, rallies with other district teachers outside the middle school before Tuesday’s board meeting. The board was going to vote on furloughing six teachers, but removed it from the agenda hours before the meeting.
WAYNESBURG – After a heated budget committee meeting and closed-door negotiations with the teachers’ union Monday, Central Greene School Board did not vote Tuesday to furlough six teachers, veering from the initial plan.
Instead, the board removed the furloughs from Tuesday night’s agenda.
“In a good faith effort and because we had such a good conversation at that meeting last night, we wanted to hold that decision and look at some other options,” said Superintendent Brian Uplinger.
That didn’t stop more than 200 people from filling the auditorium at Margaret Bell Miller Middle School Tuesday night to show support for the teachers.
“We hope that you are serious in working with us over the course of the next several weeks to come up with a compromise so that those action items do not end up on the June 30 board agenda,” said Melissa Wilson, president of the teachers’ union.
The plan was to vote to eliminate eight positions, including placing six teachers on furlough because of budget constraints. The teachers who would have lost their jobs include four high school special education teachers and a life skills teacher and an art teacher at the middle school, according to Wilson.
The other two positions were the high school and middle school librarians, according to Uplinger.
The furloughs would have been part of the $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 the cuts were necessary since it still has not received the $3.4 million in 2015 taxes owed them from Alpha Natural Resources, which declared bankruptcy in 2015.
Students, community members and teachers showed up Tuesday to ask the board to find another way.
Jeromy Mackey, president of the Class of 2017, was one of 18 people who spoke about concerns for the future of Central Greene, several of them, including Mackey, received standing ovations from the crowd.
“I’m terrified,” he said. “I was excited about my senior year, but this is going to affect the most important year of my life.”
Bonnie Smouse, a parent of a student in the district’s special education program, spoke about her concerns the furloughs, which could still happen at the board’s June 30 meeting, target students in that program.
“Why does this department seemed to be singled out?” she asked the board. “Are there any cuts or furloughs in the administration positions? Get your priorities straight or get off the board.”
Heather Morris, a special education teacher in the district, said if the science and social studies special education teachers are furloughed that will only leave one teacher in each of those categories to share a caseload of 45 students.
“They would each also have three learning support classes each – which is students with the greatest disabilities – and 11 co-teaching classes, totaling 14 classes each in seven periods,” she said.
She said that type of workload would “take away the ability to address each students’ individual needs.”
Neil Shannon, a Waynesburg resident, also pleaded with the board to not cut teaching jobs.
“I don’t know these people or who’s getting furloughed,” he said. “But I ask you guys to have a heart and find another way. It breaks my heart to see people get laid off when we could probably, as a community, come up with another way.”
Bill Speakman, chief negotiator for the teachers’ union, suggested other ways to deter firing teachers, like digging into the budgetary reserve fund, which holds about $475,000.
“Is that not enough to save those jobs?” he asked the board.
He also asked about a piece of property the board purchased in 2015 to expand the main campus. The land, which has yet to be developed by the district, is valued at more than $900,000.
“If the financial crisis is as bad as the district says, why not sell the land?” Speakman said.
Other ways to save money were discussed during Monday night’s committee meeting. The teachers suggested a retirement incentive for high-salary teachers.
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 Monday meeting.
“We talked about that a little bit further but no decision was made,” Uplinger said about the private meeting.
Another cost-saving opportunity discussed was pay freezes for teachers, support and custodial staff and administrators, which could potentially save the district about $400,000, according to preliminary figures discussed Monday. But the teachers’ won’t be on board with that, according to Wilson.
“We’ve made it very clear that our membership will not go for something that calls for a year pay freeze,” she said.
Wilson said the district already saved roughly $125,000 by not coming to an agreement with the teachers this past year, as they’ve been working without a contract since August. The contract negotiations stalled in March when the board rejected a tentative agreement the bargaining tables for each side had reached.
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.
Wilson said she was frustrated the board waited until June 14 to start a budget committee to address financial problems, since the final budget is due June 30.
“We hope that the budget committee you created was not just a façade to make you seem willing to work with us only to turn around and end up furloughing six teachers on June 30 anyway,” she said.
Uplinger said he was happy to see everyone show up Tuesday and to hear from so many people about the furloughs.
“That’s part of the reason the board decided to take them off the agenda – to give us more time to try to find a better way,” he said. “Plans change. We’re just looking at that bottom number, that $1.4 million that we need to cut.”