District 207 offers teachers a compromise option

Maine Township High School District 207's administration is offering its teachers union a last-minute deal to save roughly 40 to 45 teaching jobs, officials said Friday.

District 207 Superintendent Ken Wallace said on Monday he will recommend to the school board spending up to $2 million more out of reserves for two years, if the Maine Teachers Association matches that amount in salary concessions.

The move comes after a barrage of comments at a recent public hearing where a couple of thousand students, parents, teachers and community members asked the school board to reconsider cutting 75 teachers by school year end.

The teachers union would have to agree to forego a 3.2 percent salary increase in the 2010-2011 academic year, which would have a compounding effect the second year, Wallace said.

Most teachers would continue to receive step pay increases based on years of experience and a 3.5 percent wage increase for the 2011-2012 school year, officials said.

The news caught Maine Teachers Association President Emma Visee by surprise.

"I am livid that this is going public like that," Visee said. "They seem to be again deflecting the conversation away from (the administration's) responsibility to 'it is the teachers.' We don't hire. We don't fire. We don't do the budget. Obviously, now this is going to require me to pull together my leadership team and we are all in class Friday."

The union itself has faced criticism for earlier rejecting the administration's request to forego the 3.2 percent wage increase in 2010 and the 3.5 percent increase in 2011 to save 55 jobs.

Visee said district officials are using internal divisions within the union as an opportunity to break its resolve to save all teacher jobs.

"I do think that dissension within the union has become very public and very critical of union leadership and that is very unfounded," Visee said. "We are trying to work through this issue strategically. People want to divide it into the new teachers and the old teachers. It's not that. I deeply resent when people try to pigeonhole based on your age or experiences."

Visee is calling on union membership to stick together and see what the school board does on Monday.

"We are an organization," she said. "We are only as effective as we work together."

Eliminating the 75 largely nontenured, certified teachers would save the district $5 million, administrators say. The cuts would largely affect the English, science, special education, physical education, applied arts and technology and mathematics departments at the district's three high schools.

Overall, the administration has recommended $15 million in cuts, which includes eliminating 137 jobs districtwide from the 2010-2011 academic year budget, to reduce a projected $19 million deficit blamed largely on declining property tax revenues.

If this deal is made with the teachers union, the district would incur an additional $4 million deficit on top of the $4 million to $9 million deficit anticipated next year with the proposed cuts.

Though many who spoke at the public hearing asked district officials to absorb the entire $19 million deficit and save all teaching jobs, that's not a responsible approach, Wallace said.

Wallace said since then, officials have heard from a large group of taxpayers who don't believe the district should continue deficit spending.

"Many of those community members have lost jobs or given salary concessions in their own jobs in order to stay working, or to help their co-workers maintain jobs," Wallace said. "And those community members believe that there needs to be some give and take here ... that the district simply deficit spending in order to keep all of our employees, that's a plan for making us insolvent. They expect the teachers to meet us halfway."

Over a three-year period, the district's reserve is already being cut about $30 million due to deficit spending.

The latest offer is a means of getting teachers back to the negotiating table, Wallace said.

"What we've given is one example to get people thinking," Wallace said. "We've given more than 10 different scenarios out already for ways that we can accomplish this. We never have wanted to release this number of teachers, but we're also charged with being fiscally responsible for the district."

The school board is expected to approve layoffs and other cuts Monday. Some tenured teachers won't know until March whether they will be laid off.

"We would like to get something resolved by the March 1 meeting. That way, we could recall any teachers whose positions were saved," Wallace said.

On Monday, district administration also will recommend retaining fencing as a varsity sport at Maine West High School, and keeping three school resource officers serving all three district schools in a full-time capacity - the earlier recommendation was to make those part-time positions.

Funding for the fencing program was targeted as part of cost reductions, which would have made it an intramural sport.

District officials reversed their position after hearing the pleas of dozens of Maine West fencing students last week.

The administration will work with parents and students to find ways to lower the program's cost, officials said.