Reading, Writing and Recession

BANKERS, lawyers and journalists have lately taken pay cuts and gone without raises to stay employed in a tough economy. Now similar givebacks are spreading to education, an industry once deemed to be recession-proof.

All 95 teachers and five administrators in the Tuckahoe school district in Westchester County have agreed to contribute $1,000 each to next year’s school budget to keep the area’s tax increase below 3 percent.

In the Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow district, 80 percent of the 500 school employees — including teachers, clerks, custodians and bus drivers — have pledged more than $150,000 from their own pockets to help close a $300,000 budget gap.

And on Long Island, the 733 teachers in the William Floyd district in Mastic Beach decided to collectively give up $1 million in salary increases next year to help restore 19 teaching positions that were to be eliminated in budget cuts.

New York State’s powerful teachers’ unions have rarely agreed to reopen contract negotiations in bad economic times, let alone make concessions. But as many school districts presented flat budgets to voters in recent weeks, teachers in at least a dozen suburban areas have opened the door to compromise to save jobs, preserve programs and smaller class sizes, and show support for the towns and villages where many of them have taught generations of families.

Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of the New York State United Teachers, said the last time teachers made so many concessions was during the financial crisis of the 1970s.

“In a normal school year, in a normal economic situation, we would see very little of what’s going on now,” said Mr. Iannuzzi, who predicts more than 5,000 layoffs of teachers statewide next year because of budget cuts.

In New York City, where the Bloomberg administration said last week that schools would face a 5 percent cut, the United Federation of Teachers said there had been no discussion of reopening its contract, which runs through October. And in New Jersey and much of Connecticut, where school districts face similarly tight budgetary times, calls for teacher givebacks have largely been ignored, or rejected.

The teachers’ union in Ridgewood, N.J., for example, voted this spring against a district proposal to renegotiate salaries. “We’re sympathetic to the economic situation, but we just don’t believe that teachers and school employees are overpaid,” said Steve Baker, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, pointing out that no district ever rushed forward to double teachers’ raises during boom times. “Our members are the same middle-class people feeling the pinch of this recession as well, so we don’t feel it’s appropriate to target them for givebacks.”

Even in some of the places where unions have voted to help out management, some members have balked. In the William Floyd district, 60 teachers —about 8 percent of the total — voted against giving up what amounted to $1,190 apiece, while 580 teachers voted to do so (those who voted no still have to forgo the money). In Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, donations from school employees have been kept confidential so as not to place undue pressure on those who do not participate.

“We didn’t want people to feel that it’s some kind of contest,” said Howard Smith, the Tarrytown superintendent.

Richard Perugini, a physical education teacher who is president of the Tarrytown teachers’ union, said he has pledged to give money even though his wife, Carmen, a teacher’s aide, is to be laid off from a nearby school district in June. “We’ll be living paycheck to paycheck,” he said.

Tarrytown’s budget for next year is $62.5 million, a 3.8 percent increase. While that is about half the size of the annual growth in recent years, leading the district to eliminate four teaching positions, four teaching assistants and 10 bus drivers and monitors, it is nonetheless higher than in some places. White Plains has an increase of 0.74 percent, to $185.7 million, the smallest in more than 25 years.

Similarly, Yonkers, Westchester’s largest school system, has a planned budget increase of 0.81 percent (to $487.1 million), after increases of at least 5 percent in each of the past two years. District officials say they have to buy fewer supplies, negotiate lower rates for food and busing, suspend supplemental teacher training and pare special education costs by more than $3 million to cover rising expenses for salaries and benefits.

“There’s a real sense that we’ve reached a limit, and in many communities, that translates into, ‘We can’t even raise it one dollar,’ ” Dr. Smith said.

In most districts, personnel costs are the largest expenses, making up three-quarters or more of the annual budget, so renegotiating terms with teachers is one of the only ways to avoid cuts in the classroomIn Cambridge, N.Y., about 50 miles north of Albany, the 980-student district had proposed to lay off a teacher, two teaching assistants and five aides — about 4.5 percent of its school staff. As an alternative, the teachers agreed, in a vote of 68 to 22, to reopen their contract and accept smaller stipends for advising student clubs, coaching athletic teams and chaperoning school events. The savings to the district: $67,868.

“I laid out the problem,” said Daniel Severson, the superintendent. “Everybody knows everybody because it’s small; we all live in the same town.”

Similarly, William Floyd teachers averted the layoffs of nine teachers, and helped the 9,600-student district restore 10 other teaching positions, by agreeing to give up part of their raises, a concession similar to one the union made in 1991 to help close a budget gap.

In return, they secured a one-year contract extension, to 2010-11, with a 2.5 percent raise on top of annual step raises.

“We did not want to see any of our teachers lose their jobs, or good programs suspended, and that’s what was going to happen,” said Karen D’Esposito, a high school social studies teacher who is president of the union.

In Tuckahoe, teachers already contribute $10 annually for a $1,000 scholarship awarded to a graduating student, and they frequently volunteer at school events. But last fall, Michael V. Yazurlo, the superintendent of the 1,000-student district, approached the union about trying to keep next year’s property tax increase at 2.88 percent, the lowest in more than a decade.

“We are already at survival level,” said Dr. Yazurlo, who gave up a 3.5 percent pay raise for next year. “We don’t have the fat, the extra staff other districts have.”

The teachers’ union had initially proposed that its members voluntarily contribute between $200 and $600, based on salary, to support the school budget. But that amount was rejected — as too little — by many of the teachers, some of whom have spent more than three decades in the district. The final amount was $1,000 per teacher.

Marianne Amato, a 12th-grade English teacher and president of the teachers’ union, said, “Everybody really understood that this is a different time and we have to do something to help as a community of teachers.”