PHILLIPS – School board members voted unanimously in an open session Thursday to deny a Mt. Abram Teacher’s Association grievance relating to pay.
Two years ago, a clause was negotiated into the teachers’ contract intended to “discourage the district from hiring inexperienced (and low-salaried) teachers,” said Maine Education Association representative Laurie Haapanen.
“Basically there is a provision in our contract that says if somebody retires (from the district) the difference in salaries (between the retiring teacher, usually at the top of the pay scale, and the new teacher, usually at the bottom) is divided in half and distributed among the teachers,” SAD 58 Superintendent Quenten Clark said Friday.
Haapanen said Thursday the teachers she represents feel they deserve the extra money because when an inexperienced teacher is brought in to replace a retiring one, he or she will “have to be mentored,” creating a “workload problem” for veteran teachers already busy with their own classes.
Clark explained the district also supports the provision, saying “it encourage(s) me, and my principals and my board to hire more qualified people,” rather than hiring the cheapest replacement for a retiring teacher.
“One of the things districts will do is hire the cheapest possible teacher when someone leaves,” he said.
This provision makes it more likely the district will “hire best the qualified teacher.”
In the two years the clause has been in effect, Clark said, district teachers have each received about $200 per year as their cut of the district’s savings when teachers retired.
But in the grievance brought before the board Thursday by Mt. Abram High School special education teacher Merit Bean, who was represented by Haapanen and Mt. Abram Teachers’ Association President June Flagg, members of the association contended they should have received more money in school year 2005-06 than they actually got.
They were paid for three of the teachers who retired last year, Haapanen said, but five teachers, not three, retired.
But SAD 58 administrators and school board members argued only three teachers retired – the other two left the district and stopped teaching, but were not eligible for retirement.
“The Maine State Retirement System,” which the teachers’ contract uses to define retirement, “says to be eligible (for retirement) you need to have taught for 25 years or be 62,” said Clark.
Neither of the two teachers who left was eligible for retirement, said Eustis school board representative Patti Simpson.
The board voted unanimously to deny the teachers’ demand for the money.
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