City school district had proposed employees freeze pay for one year to save $10 million. That would have prevented layoffs.
Syracuse Teachers Association, which represents teachers in the city district, has cancelled a vote on a proposed pay freeze. Here, fourth graders at Seymour Elementary work on their lessons.
The Syracuse Teachers Association canceled a vote on whether to take a pay freeze and isn’t likely to reschedule it any earlier than September, if at all, according to Kevin Ahern, who becomes association president July 1.
Superintendent Daniel Lowengard has asked all the district’s unions to take a one year pay freeze starting July 1 to save $10 million. That savings would prevent layoffs and mitigate a projected 244 job cuts to balance the budget, Lowengard says.
At a special meeting Thursday, the school board made its first major round of cuts. It eliminated 204 jobs, including more than 92 teachers and 49 teaching assistants. The district has about 4,000 employees.
The union representing administrators and supervisors voted last week to accept a freeze — if the school board agrees to offer employees a state early-retirement program.
But Lowengard said Thursday he is not recommending that the board adopt it at this point because the cost is too high. He said he may later recommend adopting it for a targeted group of employees.
The administrators’ union leader, Brian Nolan, has said his members won’t go for the freeze without the incentive but would be willing to listen to other proposals from the district if they included some sort of retirement incentive offer. The teachers association canceled its vote, which was scheduled for Thursday.
“It is obvious to us that the highest paid employees in the district are not willing to make the kind of sacrifice that our members are expected to make,” Ahern said.
The teachers’ expectation has been all along that if there were a wage freeze, it would have to happen across the board.
The timing of the freeze proposal was not good because it came so close to the end of the year, when members are busy, he said. Today is the last day for staff and getting people together over the summer is difficult, Ahern said.
Contact Maureen Nolan 470-2185 or mnolan@syracuse.com