By GAYLA CAWLEY
SWAMPSCOTT — School officials already grappling with a $275,000 budget deficit are seeing an additional obstacle after the Swampscott Education Association, the teacher’s union, rejected their proposed contract and could potentially seek higher raises.
School officials held a public forum on their proposed $30.49 million FY18 budget last week. After revolving funds and grants are taken into account, the school district budgeted for $28,272,500 in town allocation. But the town is only allocating an additional $750,000 from last year’s amount, or $27,997,500. Therein, lies the $275,000 deficit.
School officials are faced with a scenario where the $750,000 increase in town allocation is not even enough to cover their teacher- and staff-anticipated salary increases. In December, Evan Katz, school business administrator, projected there would be $960,000 in salary increases for school employees and teachers, based on a then-anticipated 1.5 percent raise for educators.
Parents are not happy that to bridge the $275,000 gap the school department is considering transitioning full-day kindergarten to a half-day program at no charge. Parents would have to pay tuition for the full-day program.
Many of the same parents who voiced their opposition to that option last week to the school committee repeated those concerns to the board of selectmen on Wednesday night. School officials have asked the town to increase their allocation to bridge the gap instead.
Selectman Peter Spellios said the board, made up of parents of children in Swampscott Public Schools, is sympathetic to the talk around preserving full-day kindergarten.
But, he said, since the budget was presented at the public forum last week, the teachers’ union voted not to ratify their contract, which was negotiated with the school department. He said it was his understanding that part of the reason given was that the union found it “suspicious” that the school was miraculously able to take a $1.5 million deficit and make it a $275,000 gap.
Initially, school officials were faced with a $1.5 million projected budget deficit. Through some cuts and fee increases, the deficit was reduced to $275,000.
Spellios said he would not advocate for allocating more town funds to the school department, if it would potentially go toward payroll, rather than keeping programs such as full-day kindergarten. He called union leadership irresponsible that they would reject the contract because they thought that there was more money on the table for them. He said 80 percent of the school budget is already devoted to salaries, and added that contractual increases are outpacing the revenue the town can give to the schools. He compared it to feeding a Pacman that keeps eating the programming.
Superintendent Pamela Angelakis said without ratification of the contract, or the Memorandum of Agreement, budgeting an unknown increase for potential raises is difficult, if not impossible.
“If the union were to attempt to negotiate a higher increase, then yes, the current deficit would increase,” Angelakis said in an email. “I support the board of selectmen’s position. If more money were allocated to the schools, I could not allow it to be used for anything other than (kindergarten) programming because it’s the right thing to do.”
The Swampscott Education Association issued a statement on its Facebook page on why they “overwhelmingly rejected a proposed contract.” The SEA said there was no language in the contract to protect the professional autonomy and educators’ judgment and no language giving educators sufficient voice in school-based decisions.
“The members of the SEA question the dramatic change in statement about the town’s deficit, which was reported by town officials as $1.6 million at the start of mediation when salary bargaining was underway and was more recently pegged at $275,000 after a tentative agreement was reached,” the statement said. “Please support your Swampscott educators as we head back to the bargaining table.”
Nancy Hanlon, SEA president, was asked if the union would be seeking higher raises. She said it feels that in the midst of mediating a fair contract, it would be unethical to issue a full statement.
“However, we want to be clear that the rejection was based on several factors, the least of which was monetary,” she said in an email. “The SEA believes that teachers are not being treated with respect as professionals.”
To reduce the initial $1.5 million budget gap to $275,000, there have been revenue increases of $240,000, personnel transition savings of $200,000, program reductions of $314,000, and the $300,000 budgeted for the unknown amount of students who may join the district and require special education services has been eliminated. School officials say eliminating free full-day kindergarten is a last resort.
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Gayla Cawley can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @GaylaCawley.