YOUNGSTOWN Schools weigh bonus to retire

Declining enrollment is forcing teaching staff cuts, a school official says.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The city schools administration and the teachers union are discussing a proposal under which teachers would be offered a retirement incentive.
Teachers who are already eligible to retire would be given a $1,000 bonus for declaring by April 1 their intention to retire at the end of this school year.
Germaine Bennett, executive director of human resources, said that she didn't know exactly how many teachers would be eligible for the incentive but that it is between 60 and 100.
The proposal would allow the school district to better plan its staffing requirements for next year during April, and the retirements could reduce or eliminate the need for teacher layoffs, Bennett said. Under state law, the district must notify any teachers being laid off or nonrenewed by April 30, she said.
"It can't guarantee us that there won't be any layoffs, but it should reduce the number," of furloughs, she said of the retirement incentive.
Risk of layoffs
Once teachers are notified of their layoff in the spring, it may be difficult to bring them back if circumstances later justify their being recalled because they may have found other employment, Superintendent Benjamin McGee told the board of education Tuesday.
"Some of our new young teachers are very promising, so what we'd like to try to do is avoid having to lay them off" and avoid taking the risk of losing them, he explained. "If we don't have an incentive, we may not know until summer who's retiring."
Typically, about 50 teachers retire each year, Bennett said. The district has 855 teachers. Bennett estimated their average age at 42.
Enrollment decline
The district must reduce its instructional staff by 40 to 50 teachers because enrollment has declined, partly because of pupils' moving out of the district or switching to charter schools, Bennett said. When pupils switch to charter schools, state funding follows them there, and the district must reduce staffing costs, she noted. Enrollment dropped from more than 10,000 last school year to about 9,700 this school year, Bennett said.
The retirement incentive was discussed in a Monday meeting of the board of education's certificated personnel committee and reported to the full board Tuesday by Kathryn Hawks-Haney, committee chairwoman.
The board also voted to buy $408,898 worth of furniture and equipment from Lorco Business Systems of Youngstown for the new Harding and Taft elementary schools.