RUMFORD — Contract bargaining representatives for Regional School Unit 10 say the superintendent and school board chairman were not transparent about how money from COVID-19 government funds were given as bonuses to bus drivers, custodians and administrators.

Chris Carver and Craig Dillman, co-presidents of the Western Foothills Education Association, the bargaining representative association for the district for its bus drivers/custodians, teachers, educational technicians, secretaries, and central office and technology staff, emailed the Rumford Falls Times this week to challenge statements made by school officials that were published in the Sun Journal on Jan. 21 about the bonuses.

In that story, Superintendent Deb Alden noted that COVID-19 funds were used for $1,000 retention bonuses paid to bus drivers and custodians. The district’s school nutrition staff was paid $700, and they also received additional pay if they had to work more hours than usual during the pandemic.

According to Carver, the additional payments teachers and staff received in January for their work during the pandemic were for overtime. The information provided to the RSU 10 board by Alden, he said, “is inaccurate because teachers don’t receive overtime pay and the $1,000 bonus was a negotiated agreement that was not based in any way on hourly pay.”

However, in an email from Alden sent last month, she wrote, “We also paid teachers for additional time, per hour, at what is negotiated in their contract as Curriculum Work Wage for professional development and planning for remote instruction.”

Also at issue, Carver said, was that “the district was not transparent with the monies paid to administrators.” In a letter to association members sent recently, Carver and Dilman wrote that they “discovered in November that RSU 10 had paid all of its administrators 23.5 days at the per diem rate for work they completed resulting from the demands placed upon them by the pandemic between early 2020 to May 2021.

“The superintendent and one building principal received a lesser amount. The payment was made in a lump sum on May 14, 2021. Though the superintendent stridently denies that the payments to administrators, in amounts as large as $9,346.89 and totaling $117,736.71, are ‘bonuses,’ nearly all of those individuals awarded monies allegedly worked exactly 23.5 days,” they wrote.

“There’s no record of time recorded and only a list of duties performed, to our knowledge. That certainly sounds like a bonus to us. We believe that semantics are important because (COVID-19) funds were used,” the presidents wrote.

In response, Alden said, “Yes (administrators were) paid in a lump sum for time they listed that was spent above 60 (hours) a week on COVID issues. No one was (paid) more than 23.5 days.”

Alden further explained, in an email to the Times, that “This was negotiated with the administrators under their contract and was never talked about as a bonus but as per diem pay. (COVID-19 funds) were not supposed to be used as bonuses so we had to tie it to work done above and beyond because of COVID.”

Carver told the Times that the $1,000 bonus awarded to all bus drivers/custodians employed by the district was given “without negotiating with the WFEA, as required by the collective bargaining agreement. Monies for both administrators and bus drivers/custodians came from (COVID-19) funds,” he said.

Carver and Dilman said in their letter to association members that, in November, they “discovered that the district paid each member of the bus driver/custodial unit a well-deserved stipend of $1,000 for their hard work through the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as offering a $1,000 sign-on bonus in an attempt to attract new staff.

“No other bargaining unit was contacted and no other bargaining unit was offered this one-time stipend, either,” they said.

Once they learned of the bus driver/custodial stipend, Carver and Dilman met with Alden and school board Chairman Greg Buccina to ask why only one group the association represents was recognized.

After that meeting, they received an offer from the district “to pay $1,000 to staff from the Educational Technicians, Secretaries, (Central Office/Technology staff) and Teacher bargaining units for employees hired before Jan. 1, 2021, and $400 paid to those hired after (that date),” the association presidents wrote.

In explaining the reason current drivers/custodians were paid the extra $1,000, Alden said that after the RSU 10 board decided to offer a $1,000 sign-on bonus to any new bus drivers/custodians, they also decided to pay that amount to current drivers. She said she “felt it would not be in our best interest to not provide that to the drivers who have stayed with us this entire time, so the board agreed to provide them (current bus drivers/custodians) with the same.

“We did not see bonuses as negotiable wages at the time,” Alden wrote.

RSU 10 includes Rumford, Mexico, Roxbury, Buckfield, Sumner, Hartford and Hanover.

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