ROVIDENCE — No matter how you slice it, school experts say, the decision Thursday by the city School Board to notify teachers that they might be terminated at the end of the school year strikes at the heart of their union contract’s seniority system.
Mayor Angel Taveras says that the decision he recommended to the board is strictly about balancing the city and the School Department budgets. He says that termination will save money because teachers who are dismissed and not rehired will not end up in a substitute teaching pool.
But David V. Abbott, the state’s deputy education commissioner, said the difference between layoffs and dismissals is this: When a teacher is laid off under state statute, he or she is put on a recall list. Although that teacher is no longer working and no longer paid, that person exists in an employment “limbo.” The teacher hasn’t been actually dismissed.
If a job becomes available for which that teacher is qualified, that person must be rehired based on seniority.
“If you are laid off, you have the right of recall,” Abbott said Friday. “You still have one stick in your bundle. If I’m dismissed, I’m out of work and I need to be rehired.”
In effect, every teacher who is terminated has to reapply for his or her job as would any new teacher entering the system.
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