An offer from Syracuse school administrators and supervisors to take a one-year wage freeze seems to have fizzled for now. The Syracuse Association of Administrators and Supervisors agreed to the freeze only if the district offers its employees a state early retirement incentive. But after crunching the numbers, district Chief Financial Officer Suzanne Slack said it does not make financial...
An offer from Syracuse school administrators and supervisors to take a one-year wage freeze seems to have fizzled for now.
The Syracuse Association of Administrators and Supervisors agreed to the freeze only if the district offers its employees a state early retirement incentive.
But after crunching the numbers, district Chief Financial Officer Suzanne Slack said it does not make financial sense for the district to offer the incentive and she recommends that the board not do so. Because of that, the board budget and finance committee decided earlier this week not to ask the full school board to vote to adopt the incentive.
Board President Richard Strong said Wednesday that doesn’t necessarily mean the state incentive is a dead issue for the board but it appears to be too expensive to be feasible. He wants to see if the district can come up with another retirement incentive that would result in a wage freeze.
Superintendent Daniel Lowengard has asked all the district’s unions to take a one-year freeze, which he said would save the district $10 million, prevent layoffs and reduce job cuts. As it stands now, the school board expects to cut about 244 jobs to balance next year’s district budget.
The Syracuse Teachers Association, the district’s biggest union, has yet to announce whether its members will accept the freeze. Union president-elect Kevin Ahern did not return several messages left on his voice mail Tuesday and Wednesday.
Brian Nolan, who heads the administrators’ union, said it would consider another incentive if the district proposes one. A one-year freeze for administrators and supervisors would save the district about $600,000 next year, he said.
“We’re a very small part of the overall salary savings that the district was trying to receive from the salary freeze, so we could move forward and say we would take the salary freeze but $600,000 isn’t really going to do much,” Nolan said “And we were trying to kind of be the leaders out front of it, trying to maybe help the other unions in deciding what they were going to do.”
Contact Maureen Nolan 470-2185 or mnolan@syracuse.com