District 219 To Keep Tenured Teachers

The District 219 school board and teachers union have reached a tentative agreement to save the jobs of 10 tenured teachers who were told earlier this month that their contracts would not be renewed for next year, school board president Robert Silverman announced Monday night.

The agreement, which will be presented to the teachers union Thursday, would mean that other, non-tenured teachers would be laid off. The Niles Township High School District 219 board tentatively approved the agreement late Monday.

Silverman announced the tentative agreement after nearly a dozen people, including students, teachers and parents spoke in support of the teachers who had received layoff notices.

One of the speakers, Niles West science teacher Ruth Gleicher, spoke of the distress the bargaining process had created.

Gleicher, a 17-year teaching veteran who holds national board certification, said the atmosphere and uncertainty created by the bargaining process – a process to determine which teachers will stay and which will go – has her considering early retirement for the first time.

“There is a terrible combative feeling in our buildings,” Gleicher said. “It exists. It is true. Every teacher feels it. I suddenly feel like I’m an expense to the school, not an asset.”

The changes in staffing that were approved Feb. 7 are part of a restructuring plan that will place more emphasis on the core areas of math and reading. At the same time, health would be incorporated into sophomore physical education classes and some classes in the applied sciences and technology department would be eliminated, with their content rolled into other classes.

Applied science and technology includes classes ranging from child development and fashion design to business law and automotive classes.

Six tenured physical welfare teachers and four applied sciences and technology teachers who had tenure were told their jobs would be cut. The plan would mean a savings of about $1 million next year, Silverman said at the Feb. 7 meeting.

At the time, he noted that the district and the teachers’ union were negotiating over the way next year’s staffing would ultimately play out, but the Illinois School Code and the existing teacher contract required the teachers to be notified in early February.

Pankaj Sharma, president of the  Niles Township Federation of Teachers (the union), had argued that the district did not need any immediate staffing cuts because it has more than $110 million in reserves, and said the district should use that cushion to soften the blow, cutting positions as teachers retire.

Silverman noted that the district has added several programs in recent years, and that can’t continue indefinitely.

“We can’t continue to add, add, add, add, add, because the money is fairly finite,” he said. “Now that we’ve restructured, we have 10 teachers too many.”

Silverman acknowledged that the process for setting next year’s staffing plan had been difficult.“I don’t think it had to get this messy, but it did,” he said.

District 219 Superintendent Nanciann Gatta said she also did not like the situation.

“It does concern me, the level of anxiety and angst that exists,” she said. “Every year, we have 10 or 15 teachers who leave and 10 or 15 who come back.”

The annual bargaining over staffing is a result of long-term bargaining agreements, Gatta said. While she supports the need for a union and working under a multi-year collective bargaining agreement, there must be provisions for addressing the classes to be offered more frequently than every three to five years, she said.

“When you make changes in the program, sometimes you just need less teachers,” she added.