Schools closed amidst ‘sick- out’

Mayor says action ‘shameful’ as of teachers call in sick en masse

WOONSOCKET – City residents woke up to 7 inches of November snow left from Thursday’s Nor‘easter but it wasn’t the white stuff that resulted in local students staying home from school on Friday – city schools were closed to a teacher sick out.

There was no official confirmation the teacher sick out was related to the ongoing contract dispute between the city and the Woonsocket Teachers Guild representing union teachers and paraprofessionals in local schools but there was also no doubt about the action being connected given the numbers of staff involved – by some accounts into the hundreds.

School Superintendent Patrick J. McGee sent out an email and social media posting to parents about the decision to close school on Friday that listed expected teacher and staff absences as the cause.

“Due to an excessive number of scheduled teacher and staff absences across the district tomorrow, school is canceled in the Woonsocket Education Department tomorrow, Friday, November 16,” he said. “Please know that the decision to cancel school was not made lightly. My priority as superintendent is to ensure that all students are adequately supervised and are kept safe while at school,” McGee said.

“Unfortunately, with so many staff absent at one time we cannot safely cover all classes with substitute teachers. I am truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause, Sincerely Patrick J. McGee, superintendent of schools.”

McGee did not list how many teachers and support staff called in sick for Friday and could not be reached for comment later.

But Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt wasted no time on Friday attributed the staff sickness to the ongoing contract dispute.

“When you have hundreds of staff calling out, I think that

is shameful,” Baldelli-Hunt said when contacted about the school closing.

The mayor blamed the sickout on the executive board of the Woonsocket Teacher Guild which she described as “operating in a very unprofessional manner.”

The guild leadership was responsible for the closing, according to Baldelli-Hunt, who also maintained that the district has “a lot of wonderful teachers,” who just want to do their jobs.

“It is my understanding from what I was told, the leaders of the union had a meeting yesterday and during the meeting they called for the sick-out,” Baldelli-Hunt said.

The requested job action included both teachers and paraprofessionals, she said.

The number of calls that came in exceeded the district’s ability to fill the absences with substitute teachers and a result McGee had no choice but to close school, according to Baldelli-Hunt.

Baldelli-Hunt said the forced school closing had many unacceptable impacts on families who may have had to make adjustments in work schedules and daycare as a result.

“When you are in negotiations, both sides come to the table to work, you don’t pull stunts like this because this has an effect on the education of students and makes households unsettled,” she said.

The mayor offered that the City of Providence has been in contract talks with its teachers for five years and while an agreement was just reached recently, the teacher’s union had continued to work while the negotiations were conducted.

“Over the five years the Providence teachers never did what Woonsocket teachers did today,” Baldelli-Hunt said.

Since the city began negotiations with the Woonsocket Teachers Guild, local voters have decided to return the School Committee to an elected five member panel rather than the mayor-appointed committee that had been in place.

Since the change was made under a special election vote, Baldelli-Hunt said the new membership arrangement took effect on Friday, 10 days after the election, as specified in the city charter.

Baldelli-Hunt said the rule allowed newly elected member Rebecca Capwell to be sworn in at City Hall on Friday and the rest of the new panel’s members, Paul Bourget, Don- ald Burke, Lynn Kapiskas and Eleanor Nadeau could follow suit as they wish.

The committee is expected to meet next on Wednesday, the mayor noted.

The change also means that as of Friday the mayor’s office is no longer involved in the negotiation of school contracts and that duty now falls to the elected school committee, she noted.

“No matter who is sitting in that office, the mayor is no longer a participant in teacher negotiations any longer,” Baldelli-Hunt said.

Any settlement that is reached under the new negotiations makeup, however, must still meet with the approval of the city’s state-appointed budget supervisor, Paul Luba, she added.

“No contract can take effect without the signature of Paul Luba, our financial overseer,” she said.

That process is in place, she noted, to ensure that no one puts the city into a “fi- nancial crisis again.”

Luba was named as city’s budget supervisor when the city was working with a state-appointed budget commission to address its past budget deficits and underfunded schools.

Woonsocket Teachers Guild President Jeff Partington could not be reached for comment about the sickout on Friday but the guild did post a lengthy statement about it on its Facebook page.

Guild Executive Vice President Roxane Cary said she couldn’t “speculate on the reason why so many people have called out on this day,” but did describe teachers and paraprofessionals as being affected by the ongoing contract issue.

“This year has been taxing for every public school teacher and paraprofessional in the city. After several months of ongoing contract negotiations that ended in an impasse, we entered into mediation. But, after three meetings, mediation hasn’t allowed us to move forward as much as we had hoped,” Cary said.

“It just doesn’t appear that the city’s negotiation team is interested in giving us a fair and reasonable contract. This lack of respect from the city over the past year has lead to an increasing amount of stress being placed on our membership, and this stress can take the form of physical illness,” she said.

“The city’s negotiation team will end its participation in these proceedings once the new School Committee takes office next month,” she added.

“Our membership is a group of hard-working people; but stress is seen at all levels, in every school, because they work with no contract. We hope this changes once the School Committee comes to the table. We hope to get a fair deal,” Cary said.