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Weathersfield teachers get 2-year contract
By MARY SMITH
MINERAL RIDGE
Weathersfield Board of Education approved a new two-year contract for the district’s 62 teachers granting a 2.25 percent increase in 2010-11 and a 1.5 percent increase in 2011-12.
The contract runs from July 16, 2010, to July 16, 2012.
Schools Superintendent Damon Dohar said Wednesday that despite the raises, there is not expected to be an additional cost to the district for salaries. Instead, he said, the district will be paying less in teachers’ salaries because of six teachers taking advantage of an early-retirement bonus this year.
A starting teacher will go from $27,748 in 2010 to $28,372 in 2011 and $28,798 in 2012 under the new contract. A teacher at the top of the scale will go from $62,466 in 2010 to $66,249 in 2011 and $67,243 in 2012.
Total salaries paid in fiscal year 2010 are $3,421,195, and total salaries estimated for fiscal year 2011 are $3,306,648, schools treasurer Laurena Rouan said.
Teachers who took the early-retirement offer this year will receive a $13,500 incentive to be paid in two installments that will be made in September over two years. Teachers had to retire by June 30, and the deadline for the early-retirement incentive was March 17.
There were 65 teachers last year. Three of those teachers will be replaced, but not with teachers with such high levels of experience and salary.
Dohar said the average annual increases will range from $700 to $1,400 per teacher.
The district also has purchased 75 computers from the Hubbard schools, which is constructing new schools and getting rid of old equipment, at a cost of $10 each.
Plans are to use them to add a media room to the middle-school library. Some computers will go into a new computer lab at Seaborn Elementary, and others will be used at the high school.
Sam Raketa, middle-school computer teacher, who runs the computer programs at the district with the help of Greg Shepley of the Trumbull County Educational Service Center, said that plans are to remove the Windows XP operating system from the computers from Hubbard and replace it with Linux, a free operating system with free programs. The computers from Hubbard are still newer than the ones the district currently has, Dohar said.