Greendale School District will pay for mass retirements

Greendale - School district administrators want teachers with 15 years of service as of last June to receive full retirement benefits.

That means that 31 teachers will be able to receive full benefits at a cost of about $2 million, said Eric Green, district director of business services. The money million would be paid out over a 10-year period, as the district expects about three retirements a year.

The board is expected to take up the recommendation at its Dec. 19 meeting.

The recommendation is what was in the teachers' previous contact, which expired June 30. If approved, it means that a retiring teacher with 15 years would receive a one-time payment of at least $50,193; at the top of the scale, a teacher with 25 years of service could receive $81,355.

"The recommendation is that we would honor that into the future," said Green. "That's 31 people. It would be a fixed amount that we know right now. And it would be spread out."

Funding a mass exodus

In the past, the district has budgeted $1 million a year for retirement costs. Also, it has a small trust fund for such costs.

This past year, however, 17 teachers retired, which added about $900,000 to the district's annual cost, Green said.

The district employs about 185 teachers.

Superintendent William Hughes believes that the mass exodus is over.

"My take is most of the people who were going to go or panicked and left have gone," he said.

"We had a huge bailout of people last June," Green agreed. "A lot of our eligible people left last year, thinking about the uncertainty of whether that benefit would be there."

Weighing its responsibility

The uncertainly started with Act 10, or the budget reform bill, which ended collective bargaining for teachers on all matters except wages.

Green said it's not clear if the district has to pay for those 31 teachers' retirements, even though it was in their previous contracts. But not doing so could spell legal trouble for the district.

"It's a bit of a gray area," she said. "We have to consider the potential for litigation."

Also at stake, Hughes said, is what type of employer the district wants to be.

"It took the district years to negotiate these benefits," he said. "We want to be thoughtful about how we do this."

He said the board must figure out the type of "work environment the district is going to provide to continue to bring in strong teachers."

While the teachers' contract expired at the end of the last school year, no new one is being negotiated.

"We haven't even met with our teachers yet," Green said.

Added Hughes: "We're basically looking to see where the state shakes out on the whole set of rules that are going to govern compensation."