Court Affirms Additional Pay for EG Teachers in Contract Dispute over Class Sizes

A state Superior Court judge has affirmed an arbitrator’s decision to give 17 teachers at Archie R. Cole Middle School in East Greenwich additional pay after a dispute over workload provisions in their union contract relating to class sizes.

The School Committee, in a statement released Thursday, said that the Nov. 12 decision “jeopardizes the funding of the education program across the entire district as well as the district’s ability to sustain the innovative instructional model currently in place at Cole Middle School.”

The dispute centered on language in the teachers’ employment contract that states no classroom teacher be assigned more than 125 students and for teachers with less than five regular classes, the student count “shall be proportionally reduced.”

The school switched to a middle school model in 2004 and with the change came a reduction in the number of classes for each teacher, from five to four. This gave 53 more minutes of instructional time in a core subject “while maintaining the same teacher workload,” according to the statement.

But teachers argued they should have a maximum of 100 students assigned to each teacher under the four-class model and the arbitrator agreed after a ”thorough analysis of the dispute,” wrote Superior Court Associate Justice Allen P. Rubine in his 12-page decision affirming the arbitrator award.

Rubine concluded that the district’s argument that the arbitrator exceeded his authority was without merit as school officials agreed to the terms of arbitration up front. And on class sizes, “the school department reduced the number of classes per teacher to four, it was necessary to proportionally reduce the maximum pupils per teacher from 125 to 100,” Rubine wrote. “This is the only conceivable meaning of the words ‘proportionately reduced,’

“It is clear to the Court that the arbitrator carefully considered the evidence presented to him, including the grievances submitted by the Association, the arguments proffered by both parties, and most importantly, all relevant provisions of the CBA,” Rubine wrote.

The district points out that the “overall workloads did not change for teachers and the model has been positively received by teachers, administrators, students and families.”

“The teachers’ contract includes language governing class size which, in our view, applied only to part-time teachers who should not be expected to manage the same student load as a full-time teacher,” the School Committee release stated. “Unfortunately, that language now has been interpreted to apply to full-time teachers who teach four classes instead of five. Although the East Greenwich Public Schools is committed to reasonable class sizes, the interpretation results in a teaching load that is substantially below the maximum class size of 30. This was never the intent when we fashioned the innovative middle school model that has made Cole a nationally-recognized school and the highest performing middle school in Rhode Island as measured by the recently-released PARCC assessments.”

The financial hit on the district is not exactly clear but school officials said it will be significant. There is no plan to appeal the court decision.

Along with the additional pay for the teachers, the court ordered the district to pay the East Greenwich Education Association NEARI/NEA’s legal fees. Those costs will be determined at a future hearings.

The additional pay will come by way of a wage differential in the form of a pro-rata payment per student above the limit.

“The formula for application of this remedy is to be determined by calculating the per student wages—broken down into per student per day, if necessary—to the affected teachers and multiply that number by the number of assigned students in excess of the contractual maximum,” the decision states.

The School Committee said that members are “currently discussing how it will re-work this year’s budget in order to accommodate the required additional pay.”

“While the committee is disappointed in the Court’s decision, it remains deeply respectful of the arbitration and legal processes through which this case has traveled,” the statement read. “While the financial impact of this decision is significant, we do not find it to be fiscally prudent to appeal a decision that is unlikely to be overturned by a higher court. Rather, we will seek to address the matter moving forward through the collective bargaining process. The school committee remains committed to building upon its positive relationship with the E.G.E.A. leadership and its members, and will continue to work to ensure supportive teaching and learning environments in all of our schools across the district.”

Archie R. Cole Middle School is one of the top ranked middle schools in the state. It received a national Blue Ribbon award earlier this year.