DRACUT — In a compromise that Dracut School Committee Chairman Michael McNamara described as the key to ending 16 months of negotiations, members of Dracut’s public schoolteachers’ union agreed to give up annual step increases for the current 2012-2013 school year, the middle year of a three-year contract that will boost their pay by a total of three percent by the fall of 2014, McNamara announced.
Complicating the timing of the announcement of a new teachers’ contract containing raises, was a report made earlier in Monday night’s meeting by Superintendent Steven Stone and School Business Manager Wiliam Frangiamore that the district faces a projected $278,000 deficit by next spring due to school transportation overrun costs.
The School Committee voted 4 to 1 to authorize McNamara to sign the new three-year deal with the Dracut Teachers Association, which calls for 1.5 percent teacher raises in both the 2012-2013 and 2013-14 school years. Board member Matthew Sheehan cast the lone vote in opposition.
“Personally, I don’t think it’s the right time for a raise,” said Sheehan, addressing the meeting audience at Harmony Hall. “Financially, we’re in peril,” added Sheehan. “What the (teachers’) union did, freezing their grades and steps was a huge concession, but considering class sizes and the things we don’t have as a district, I just think it’s not the right time for an increase.”
Dracut Teachers Association President Linda Dugan and McNamara each signed copies of the contract following the board’s vote.
School Committee member Mike Miles said he voted in favor of the contract despite an expected voter backlash.
“Sitting on this board for the past five years I’ve learned you’re not going to make everyone happy,” said Miles. “There are people that are going to be overly concerned that teachers are getting a raise after we laid off people (in June). But there’s the other side of it: We’re a very successful school district for sending our (graduates) off to college.”
The Dracut Teachers Association had already ratified the agreement on Friday by a vote of the union members. “I understand the vote was not unanimous,” said McNamara.
Dugan, the DTA president, expressed gratitude to all parties involved for getting the deal done in a civil manner, ending a process that began in the spring of 2011.
“This was no windfall,” said Dugan, commenting on the raise amount after the meeting.
Earlier the School Committee received “the bad news upfront” from Stone and Frangiamore that underfunding of actual transportation costs will put the school district an estimated $278,000 in the red by June 2013.
“We’ve really got a major concern here, I’ve never before seen a deficit starting at $270,000,” said McNamara. “Even after we increased the bus fee this year from $150 to $200, it’s just not enough… It’s not rocket science, (fuel) prices go up, costs go up. We get $1.5 million from town of Dracut for transportation and it’s simply not enough.”
In other action, Stone introduced John Mara as the district’s newly hired special-education director. Mara is a former special education director in the Ayer School District. Mara told the School Committee he is looking forward to serving the district “for the next five to 10 years, and finishing out my career here,” he said.
Similar to a revelation Stone made while interviewing to become Dracut’s schools’ chief, Mara has said he is a parent to a former special education child. “So I know what it’s like to be a parent on the other side of the table,” Mara told a Harvard School District interviewing panel in 2008.
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