Newfound teachers not ready to start school year without contracts

BRISTOL — With three weeks to go before classes are scheduled to begin, teachers in the Newfound Area School District have no certainty their jobs are secure, after learning a month ago the contracts they signed in April were invalid.

Several expressed anger and frustration about the lack of communication at the Aug. 10 meeting of the Newfound Area School Board.

A majority of voters at the district meeting in March voted to approve the cost items in a new collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union, resulting in contracts offered under the new terms. However, when staff of the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration, which certifies the vote, reviewed the documents in July, they ruled the vote failed, because it lacked the 60% approval required to exceed the district’s tax cap.

The state review was delayed until the school district held a special meeting in June, to validate its annual meeting, due to school district leaders missing the deadline to submit a signed warrant and failing to supply the budget on the required forms. There also were concerns about the budget committee violating state law, by voting against the school board’s proposed budget figure without presenting a budget of its own for voters to consider.

When they learned of the problem with the contract, Interim Superintendent Brian Connelly and Business Manager Michael Limanni assured teachers, at a special school board meeting July 21, they were doing everything possible to restore any benefits within the constraints of the default budget.

“Our goal is to work with the the teachers to keep everybody here and start the year off on Aug. 31,” Connelly said.

By the Aug. 10 school board meeting, however, teachers still had no contracts.

Erin Edwards, a computer education teacher at Newfound Memorial Middle School, said their attorney, Terri Donovan of AFT-NH, asked for a copy of the letter from DRA, after they learned of the ruling on July 14, but got no response from the district or its legal counsel at Soule, Leslie, Kidder, Sayward & Loughman.

Attorney "Gordon [Graham] responded finally on the 21st that he would get back to Terri, but he didn’t,” Edwards said. “Then Terri emailed him again on the 3rd, saying, ‘Hey, what’s going on? We still haven’t heard from you.’ And then he finally got in touch with her on Friday afternoon, on the 6th, after 5 o’clock. And he sent her an email, and the email said that it was a mistake for the district and the union to assume that the CBA article was adopted by a simple majority vote, because the article did not have the required majority 3/5 needed to override the district’s cap. So he is trying to blame the union and the SAU for this, taking no responsibility for it.

“Today is what, the 10th? And we start on the 25th. We have 15 days, and we have no teachers. And he just finally responded on Friday. So the SAU has not provided the letter from the DRA stating that the vote did not pass. The lawyer did not provide it to our lawyer. The lawyer did not provide it to our president. We have nothing.”

Tyler Breckinridge, a social studies teacher at Newfound Regional High School, also complained.

“It’s very hard to trust the group when we are not hearing any communication, even just the simple, ‘We received your communication,’” he said. “I have spent my own summer trying to assure members the best I can, with very little information to go on. I cannot tell you how stressed this makes myself, makes all of us as teachers.

“You get into teaching because you do care. I care deeply for each and every kid that comes to my classroom, but ... we all need to make a living.

"People counted on that raise. People counted on that cost-of-living increase that came in the contract. To have that taken away and told in the middle of July, and then when we make requests so we can review the information, those requests go unanswered.

"How you can just act like this is not happening? People’s lives and families are affected. We are scared and concerned, and we feel those needs are not being adequately met.”

High school science teacher Emma Lagueux explained the dilemma: “Schools hire in the spring.

"You guys [said you] won’t hold it against us if we try and go find work elsewhere, but there is no work elsewhere.

"That is a hell of a rock and a hard place to be presented to us.”

Family and consumer science teacher Sarah Ohl spoke for those close to retirement: “All of my retirement earnings are based on my salary when I’m leaving, so that if my salary goes back to last year’s, instead of advancing to next year’s and the year beyond, that’s a continual financial loss for people that are close to retirement, and those of us that are close to retirement do not have five years to stay and wait while the salaries start building up and up and up again.”

Francine Wendelboe, of New Hampton, a former school board member elected to the Newfound school budget committee in March, attributed the failed vote to another committee member’s decision to increase the budget during the deliberative session. When the vote on the higher budget failed on the ballot, it triggered a default budget that fell $184,000 below what the tax cap allowed, but the first year of the teachers’ contract would have required $378,989, which in turn required a supermajority vote to pass.

“If we’re going to talk about responsibility, what triggered this was Rick Alpers from the budget committee, when he got up at the deliberative session and added money to violate the tax cap,” Wendelboe said. “That triggered the 60% on the budget, on the teachers’ contract, on the HVAC system. So if you want to point a figure and say this is the person who’s at fault, it was Rick Alpers, because the budget committee didn’t agree with the tax cap.”

School board Chair Melissa Suckling, of Danbury, said, because the matter involves a union contract, all communication between the parties has to go through the attorneys. She promised to contact the school district attorney about providing better information to teachers.