Teachers to hear new job plan

Akron to offer positions to veteran educators, who will leave in two years when stimulus funds run out

By John Higgins
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Sunday, July 5, 2009

Akron schoolteachers will meet Monday and Tuesday at Kenmore High School to hear more about a career-changing offer the district has devised to spend $14 million in federal stimulus money.

The district is creating 73 teaching positions to improve literacy in lower grades and special education throughout the district.

The Akron Board of Education approved the jobs plan last week, along with an agreement between the district and the teachers union on how those positions will be filled.

The district hopes that the most senior teachers, those who have around 30 years of service or more, will take the jobs and agree to leave the district in two years, when the federal money paying for them disappears.

That would allow the district to accomplish four things:

• Get the most experienced teachers into the most critical positions to improve reading test scores.

• Rehire the 60 to 65 teachers on the current layoff list to replace the teachers taking those stimulus-related jobs.

• Save about $1.2 million by replacing higher-paid teachers, who make $70,000 annually on average, with lower-paid, less-experienced teachers on the layoff list who make about $40,000 on average.

• Avoid a hit to the budget when the stimulus money runs out in two years. When the federal money is gone, so are the teachers.

Thomas Ash, director of Governmental Relations at the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, said he has been fielding questions from districts about how to use stimulus dollars.

His advice to all of them: ''Don't invest in something that might be difficult to give up in two years unless you know where you're going to get the money,'' he said.

He said Akron's approach makes sense.

''That's a novel solution to that issue,'' he said. ''And certainly if the teachers' association has approved it, it should be good to go.''

Incentives

But why would a teacher sign an irrevocable contract to leave the district in two years?

Well, the district has thrown in some sweeteners.

Teachers who take the deal will get first priority, based on seniority, in filling 60 of the 73 new jobs at their current salary.

They'll also get a $4,000 bonus for each year.

And, most importantly, they will add 10 days to their work year, one week before and one week after each year.

''That's where the real incentive is for people to take this who are approaching retirement,''said Bill Siegferth, president of the Akron Education Association, which represents Akron's teachers.

State pension benefits for teachers are calculated by using an average of their three highest-paying years. Siegferth doesn't believe the bonuses will count in the pension calculation, but the extra days should.

Here's how that would work:

A teacher with a master's degree and 30 years of experience in the district currently makes about $73,000 for 190 days of work, or about $384 a day. That represents a top-scale salary of about $64,000 plus raises earned after reaching certain years-of-service milestones.

If that teacher took the deal, he would add 10 days of work to his year. He wouldn't get paid as much for those 10 days because he would be doing paperwork and other administrative tasks, not working directly with children.

Instead, he would be paid 3 percent of his top-scale salary of $64,000, or about $192 a day for 10 days.

That would increase his annual salary for two of his last three years in the district by about $1,900 a year.

And that would bump up the average of his highest-paid three years, which should result in a bigger pension.

A spokeswoman for the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio said she was unable to comment on how teachers' pensions could be affected without seeing the actual wording of the agreement.

Teachers will want to see the fine print of the ''service separation agreements,'' too, but they'll have to decide by July 14.

Preventing layoffs

Siegferth has been working with the district on the plan for about a month. He said Akron and Cleveland are using a similar approach of persuading veteran teachers to take the stimulus jobs and then leave voluntarily.

''I think it's a hell of a deal for people who otherwise are facing layoff,'' he said.

The teachers on the list have eight or fewer years of experience.

Most of them should be able to replace older teachers who take the stimulus-related jobs.

''We're confident that if we have people applying and interviewing for these positions, we will be able to call everyone on the layoff list,'' said Ellen McWilliams, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

Sixty of the new stimulus-related jobs are in these three categories: 34 new literacy intervention teachers for kindergarten through second grade; six new literacy intervention teachers for grades 3-5; and 20 teachers who will fill in for teachers taking classes and workshops to improve themselves.

Teachers who agree to the ''service separation'' deal to quit after two years will get top priority for those jobs.

''If we get 100 applicants for service separation, we're going to take the first 60 by seniority and we are going to put them in one of those three positions,'' McWilliams said.

The other 13 new jobs, which include math coaches and disability specialists, will be filled strictly by interviews.

All 73 teachers who take the jobs would have to be replaced, with first priority going to teachers on the layoff list.

Planning ahead

By not hiring laid-off teachers directly into stimulus jobs, the district won't have to turn around in two years and lay them off again.

''In two years, we're hoping that most of these positions are filled with people who have signed an agreement that they're going to retire or resign after two years anyway,'' McWilliams said.

She said she appreciated Siegferth's willingness to consider the additional benefit of hiring the most veteran teachers into positions that require the most training.

Literacy intervention, for example, involves working with small groups of students who are behind in reading.

''To be able to put them in here for two years is much preferred to having someone who needs a lot of training, because we don't have time,'' McWilliams said. ''We need people who can take off with this from Day One.''

It's always possible that the district might find another way to fund the positions when the federal money runs out if it turns out they dramatically affect test scores.

''There's very stringent accountability attached to this, so we'll be able to track very carefully whether this made a difference in the district,'' McWilliams said.

But the teachers will be gone, along with the federal money, either way.

''If we can't fund all these positions in two years, they're gone anyway, and we're not laying off a whole crew of new, young teachers,'' McWilliams said.

http://www.ohio.com/news/49962872.html

John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.