Schools in Howard and Miami counties offering teacher buyouts to pare budgets

School boards in the Eastern and Northwestern school corporations will consider agreements for early retirement incentives as part of cost-cutting measures at meetings this week.

If the boards approve the agreements, they will join several schools in the area making such offers to reduce costs because of cuts in state funding to schools. Gov. Mitch Daniels cut $300 million in state funding to schools because of lower-than-expected sales tax revenues.

Most area schools have to cut between $300,000 and $400,000 in 2010. Kokomo-Center Schools must cut $2.4 million because of the state reduction.

Eastern Superintendent Tracy Caddell will recommend that teachers who retire early receive a one-time $17,000 payment into their 401(a) retirement account.

Caddell said he hopes to get three to five teachers to accept the incentive.

“If we were able to get five teachers, we would be able to save about $125,000 over a two-year period,” he said.

Eastern’s part of the state cut is $325,000, so early retirements would help, Caddell said, but it won’t make or break the corporation’s bottom line.

“Either way, we’re going to be fine. We had built up our cash balance. We’ll be able to survive this. We were looking at ways we could make some adjustments here and there.”

Northwestern Superintendent Ryan Snoddy said details on incentives for retiring district teachers will be released at the meeting.

At Western School Corp., 10 teachers accepted a $20,000 early retirement incentive. Superintendent Peter O’Rourke said teachers had to accept or decline by the end of the first semester. He said those who accepted can take the incentive as cash, payment into a retirement plan or a combination of those, but all have to do the same thing. The teachers are working that out now, he said.

Peru teachers with more than 14 years’ experience were offered $15,000 in incentives to retire to reduce the number of teaching positions.

Superintendent Andrew Melin said Peru Community Schools has to make about $1.5 million in cuts this year. The teachers who accepted the incentive will receive the payment over a three-year period. There are 24 teachers eligible for the program, he said, and seven accepted it.

Melin said the school needs to reduce 12 to 20 teaching positions, and if no teachers retire, the newest teachers hired would be terminated.

Southeastern School Corp. also offered a $20,000 retirement incentive, Superintendent John Bevan said.

Kokomo-Center Superintendent Chris Himsel said contract negotiations are ongoing, and he cannot discuss possible retirement incentives during negotiations. Taylor negotiations are also continuing, and Superintendent John Magers said there is an incentive package on the table. He did not want to discuss details during negotiations.

At Tipton, Superintendent David Bergdoll said there had been discussion of a retirement incentive, but no agreement was reached.