WESTFIELD – At a Special Meeting of the School Committee on Tuesday, prior to the budget hearing with the City Council Finance Sub-Committee, members met to ratify a new contract with UNIT A (Teachers).
After the meeting was called to order, public participation was invited. Finance Sub-Committee member David Flaherty spoke against signing the contract.
“I’m very opposed to you spending money before you have it. The city is pressing up against our levy limit,” Flaherty said. He implied in his comments that the School Committee was rushing to judgment by signing the contract, and did not take into consideration the financial ramifications of the agreement.
Throughout the meeting, several School Committee members responded to Flaherty’s comments with authority.
School Committee member Kevin Sullivan, who chaired the negotiating team with Unit A, said it was his third time in that role.
“This was a landmark type of negotiation,” Sullivan said. “The hours spent on this were immeasurable. There were some big issues, and big changes. The severance issue has been with the city for decades.”
Sullivan was referring to the agreement by the teachers to eliminate severance in exchange for increases based on longevity. Under the old contract, teachers received 15 sick days and 2 personal days. Teachers could earn an additional personal day by working two 1.5 days on parent teacher conference days. These days would accrue and be paid as severance. If a teacher had more than 180 days, he or she were paid for 100. If under 180 days, severance was paid for up to 65 days.
In the new contract, severance will be eliminated, although teachers with 25 years or more may opt out.
According to WPS Business manager Ronald Rix, there were huge concessions from teachers in the contract.
“The most notable is teachers giving up all severance by the year 2023, by phasing it out starting July 1, 2016. For the next fiscal year we will save $398,475 in severance payouts. After the 2016-17 School year teachers retiring will no longer be eligible to collect severance. Any teacher retiring next year will have their severance payments spread out over five years, rather than the current three,” Rix said.
Rix said that while teachers have given up their severance, they will receive an increase in the longevity pay after reaching a certain number of credible years of service with the Westfield Public Schools. This amount is more than covered with the amount of savings in severance payments, according to Rix.
He said teachers have also given back a portion of their professional development funding to pay for one-half percent of their FY17 pay raise of 1.5 percent.
“With a 1.5% raise this year the gross increase is $447,734 in FY17 and with the severance give back, the net total increase is $264,850. My calculation for the second year raise at 2.5% is $757,417 and the third year at 2.5% is $776,652. This three year total is $1,981,503 before we calculate in any of the severance savings which are significant,” Rix added.
He said the severance in the old contract for next year would have been $863,303, and it has been reduced to $464,828. And based on current projections, his estimate for FY22 (the last year of the five year payout) is only $102, 037.
“It was a give and take to get to this point. They (teachers) are not going to be made whole,” Sullivan said at the Special Meeting, adding, “This was a really hard sell. It will take their people 7-14 years to make that buyback.”
“It was a huge unfunded liability,” said Matthew Wroth, vice president of the Westfield Education Association about the severance pay after the meeting. “We came up with a compromise, salary increases for longevity. Retire at a higher rate – then you’d make it up.”
In a letter to the editor in The Westfield News following the Special Meeting last week, Flaherty spoke about the raises teachers received in the contract, but he did not mention the elimination of severance.
During the Special Meeting, School Committee member Cynthia Sullivan responded to some of the comments that were made.
“For the record, I’ve voted for anything to do with longevity one time. Kevin (Sullivan) had to do a lot of convincing for me to support the longevity,” Cynthia Sullivan said. “There is some convincing that has to be done of School Committee members, but Kevin convinced me. This body needs to be respected for the work that we do. We’re not deciding this in a five-minute meeting tonight.”
“We don’t do things without checking the financial impact of such things. We had Debbie Strycharz, City auditor and Meghan Kane, collector, in on the beginning,” said Mayor Brian P. Sullivan, who chairs the School Committee. “Of course, we brought financial people in. This is something that’s going to take three to four years.” He added that the School Committee had been working on the contract anywhere from eight months to three months, when he joined them after taking office.
“This was the first time we’ve seen a mayor since his brother,” Wroth said, during the meeting.
School Committee vice chair Ramon Diaz, Jr. commended Kevin Sullivan and Wroth for the work they did. “We’re trying to keep the city’s finances in mind long-term. Some of the benefits are in the future, they’re not right now, unfortunately,” Diaz said.
Following the discussion, a motion was made to ratify the contract and authorize Mayor Sullivan to sign it. The motion passed by a unanimous vote.
