Many of Union City’s veteran teachers and West New York administrators will be replaced this year because a new settlement package has been offered in both districts.
Union City will be replacing 48 teachers and West New York will be replacing seven administrators come September. These Board of Education employees took advantage of a separation package offered to teachers in Union City and administrators in West New York that allowed them to receive 100 percent of their total sick days if they agreed to resign this year.
West New York Superintendent Anthony Yankovich and Union City Assistant Superintendent Frank Vaccarino said that these packages were offered as a cost saving measure to their disticts.
Loosing teachers
According to Vaccarino, the money that the district will save from this offer will be used to increase the starting salary for the district’s new teachers.
“We had a lot of prospective teachers leaving because we didn’t have a competitive starting salary,” said Assistant Superintendent Frank Vaccarino.
Union City, whose starting salary this year is $35,000, is competing with nearby districts such as Jersey City whose starting salary is $40,000.
As an incentive to teachers being hired for September, the district offered a $3,000 bonus to boost the starting salary. The money saved with the incentive package will finance these bonuses.
According to Vaccarino, some of the teachers who are taking the buyout are leaving with $80,000 a year salaries are being replaced by teachers getting less than $40,000.
In Union City the incentive package was offered to the teachers who had been working in the district for 25 years or more.
The package will give them full value for their sick days if they agree to resign this year. Normally, teachers only received 50 percent of their sick days when they resigned or retire.
While this package will allow the district to offer a more competitive starting salary, the district will also be losing some popular teachers.
“One of the bad things is that we are losing some of our most experienced teachers,” said Vaccarino. “Some of these teachers were excellent, and that is going to be a detriment.”
However, Vaccarino said that these teachers are being replaced with younger teachers who may have more enthusiasm and have new teaching methods to bring to the classroom.
“This gave us the opportunity to do a hard core recruitment,” said Vaccarino who was at education fairs at many of the areas top schools. “We were able to recruit people with different perspectives and understanding.”
Vaccarino said that half of the positions are filled. However, some positions, especially those in the math and science departments, are going to be harder to fill.
West New York
A similar separation package was offered in West New York. Yankovich said that the West New York offer was only available for employees who were at the administrative level.
The district lost seven employees to the separation package, including principals, assistant principals and one director of guidance.
Although, the assignments of the new principals and assistant principals have not been given yet, Yankovich said that some of the principal positions left open have already been replaced by assistant principals already working within the district.
“I am confident that the people we have hired will continue where the other people left off,” said Yankovich.
Unlike Union City, whose school district received almost an $8 million increase in state funding this year, West New York did not receive any increase in funding.
Although the state has increased the cost of its employee benefits package by almost 21 percent, the state’s only aid increase was in the Early Childhood Education Program Aid, which went up about $3 million Yankovich said that the district is expecting to save between $80,000 and $100,000 in salaries in this coming year.
“We were looking for every way to stretch the monies that we do have,” said Yankovich.
However, many of the employees who are resigning with the incentive packages in both municipalities do not have to retire. Many of these employees will be able to find jobs in other districts.