With many veteran teachers accepting a recent retirement incentive offer, officials with the Vincennes Community School Corp. are hopeful they’ll be able to bring back many of the 18 teachers named this spring for lay-offs.
Superintendent Tom Nonte announced said 17 teachers had accepted the retirement package that included a one-time payment of $10,000. The offer also includes a monthly payment that serves as a “bridge” until the teacher is able to receive Social Security benefits.
After two weeks of juggling positions, Nonte said he should be able to bring back all but five of the teachers targeted for layoff — one elementary school teacher, two teachers at Clark Middle School and two teachers at Lincoln High School.
It’s good news, but Nonte said the corporation is still more than $125,000 away from meeting its goal of cutting $1.2 million from the upcoming school year’s budget.
School officials had hoped to make up that difference by eliminating what is commonly called the “back pages,” or the part of a teacher’s contract that affords them a stipend for leading a specific extra-curricular activity.
But during recent negotiations with the Vincennes Education Association, the local teacher’s union, Nonte said teachers wouldn’t agree to the elimination.
Nonte, however, didn’t fault teachers for fighting to keep the back pages of their contracts.
“They’ve gone year after year with no pay increases,” he said. “We’ve not replaced retirements, which has caused class sizes to increase. I think maybe they just want to see how what we’ve done so far shakes out.”
Nonte said school officials must keep looking for a way to cut that remaining $125,000. If not, he fears the corporation may next year be forced to cut programs, something officials have said would only be done as a last resort.
And cutting more teachers, he said, really isn’t an option, either. Doing so will increase class sizes too much.
“We’re just going to have to continue being creative and thinking about other areas where we can cut,” he said.
After eliminating 18 teaching positions in the spring, a move that saved an estimated $800,000, the school board voted to outsource its custodial services to Sodexo Inc., the same company that provides its food service. That was estimated to save another $125,000.
The school board also made about $800,000 cuts last year. It voted to eliminate about 10 teaching positions, although many of them were brought back due to a previous retirement incentive offer.
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